No Gods, Only Guns
by Peptuck
Summary: Ancient artifacts of immense power. Murderous synthetics. Ruthless megacorps. Unscrupulous mercenaries. Genocidal stellar god-machines. Incompetent galactic governments. Claptrap dubstep. The horrors of the galaxy are many, but there's one thing a good, mentally-unstable fortune-seeking antihero can rely on: the gun at his, her, or its side. Mass Effect/Borderlands fusion.
1. Chapter 1: Soldiers and Sirens

_Alright, so, first entry. Not sure why I want to do this, not like anyone is going to listen to these things unless I'm dead or bored. And . . . . Wow, less than a minute from dropping out of FTL. I'm really bored if I'm recording this. Anyway!_

_Close to Eden Prime. Hyperion's cybersecurity really needs work. Okay, no, you can't hide the fact that you've recovered Eridian beacons from the Shadow Broker, but you could try to keep the other corporations from finding out. And if you were, say, Atlas, and cracked Hyperion's transmissions, maybe you could hide that fact so everyone else in the galaxy didn't find out._

_Those colossal idiots._

_So, it's going to take some finesse. Or a shitload of firepower. Either way, the whole thing's gotten a lot more complicated, because Hyperion's going to be on guard, and Atlas and the Alliance and the Citadel and everyone else will be watching that place like a hawk. And, well, it's kind of hard to hide being a Siren if you start cutting loose, so that's attention I want to avoid._

_Alright, coming out of FTL in three . . . Two . . . One. Whoo. Good transition. Wait, crap, overshot my transit by a sec._

_Wow, there's a lot of thermal sigs from orbit. A lot of ships, don't recognize them - wait, those are thermal vents from ruptured hulls. High-end thermal sprays and radiation. That's - weapons fire! Shit, shit, sh-_

* * *

_**No Gods, Only Guns: A Mass Effect/Borderlands Fusion**_

_**Chapter One: Soldiers and Sirens**_

* * *

Her FTL vector had put the ship at the outer edge of the lifebelt in the system, about three hours' hard burn from Eden Prime itself. Or at least, that had been the plan; she'd made some kind of mistake in programming the transit, as she overshot her exit by a couple of seconds. Instead of a comfortably distant speck of blue that she would have been able to leisurely fly to and quietly land the transport on, Eden Prime loomed above her, a massive orb of blue and white and green. She expected a security query from coming out pretty close to the planet from one of the countless drones or satellites that orbited the world.

She didn't expect incoming gunfire.

"-it, shit, shit!" Lilith Shepard hissed.

The ship that fired on her was far enough away that she could see the shot coming, but close enough that she only had time to send the small, light transport into a quick evasive jerk. The mass accelerator round therefore simply blew the ship's main engine to scrap metal and sent it spinning around out of control, instead of blowing the poorly-armed freighter in half.

Lilith snarled an incoherent curse, switching on auxiliary thrusters and rerouting power. Fires briefly erupted and vanished as oxygen was swept out of the afflicted sections. Her hands flew over the controls, firing thrusters again and changing the ship's spinning, out-of-control trajectory in merely a rolling, semi-controlled tumble through space.

Gold-tinted eyes roved over the sensor plot with swift, near-panicked efficiency. The orbit of the planet was choked with sensor contacts and thermal readings. Millions of individual tiny objects radiating thermal energy, large objects that were veering or drifting and either belching heat into space or rapidly cooling, rapid flares of heat and radiation from intact ships, indicating impacts or shots fired. The tell-tale sign of massive space combat. Only this wasn't a battle.

It was a massacre.

The vast majority of the ships that were either damaged or destroyed were reading civilian identification tags, everything from light personnel carriers to small freighters like Lilith's own to massive supertransports that never landed. There were markers from numerous orbital platforms that had also been blasted to pieces. What remained were a half-dozen light Systems Alliance cruisers, and about fifty large, unidentified cruiser-sized warships with twice their number in frigates. There were no active civilian vessels; those had likely jumped out within a minute of the opening salvos, which was a testament to ruthless violence of the attackers, considering how many civilian hulks were tumbling through the planet's orbit.

The shot that had hit her ship was from one of the unidentified cruisers, likely a single shot from a broadside gun. It hadn't fired any followup shots. Likely focused on more serious threats. Thermal and background radiation plots described an oblong vessel that vaguely resembled a locust or dragonfly in the shape of its main body, long and narrow but curved and rounded, with a small, tapering "head" section. Several frigates and maybe twenty fighter craft, sharing in the same basic design, patrolled the space around the ship within two hundred kilometers.

"Ah, hell," Lilith hissed, and hit a few more controls before jumping out of her chair. The artificial gravity was one of the systems she switched off, and she lurched back toward the rear of the cockpit, bright red hair flying out behind her. The cramped bridge was designed solely for a pilot and copilot; the transport wasn't intended to have a crew of more than five or six. Still, there was enough room for a locker to contain a couple of hardsuits, and she planted her boots against the wall beside it and threw it open.

Where there would otherwise have been a standard hardsuit for vacuum, providing minimal armor and shielding, there was instead a black-and-gray military-specc'd suit of armor. She dragged out the plates and body-hugging ballistic-weave fabric and pulled it on over her spacer's jumpsuit. It took her less than twenty seconds to pull on the weave and another fifteen to attach the armor components - breastplate, shoulder and arm plates, thigh and knee plating, and boots - all of which automatically tightened to a snug fit.

She pulled back her near-shoulder-length red hair and donned the helmet, which was linked to the ship's sensors. As the HUD flared to life, she saw another round of bad news.

Two of the locust-like fighters escorting the cruiser had broken off and were moving on an intercept vector for her ship.

"This day gets better and better!" she exclaimed with fake cheer.

* * *

...

* * *

Roland's boots pounded up the ramp to the gunship, the rumbling engines of the armed transport vibrating up through his feet and into his gut. It did nothing to help the unease in his stomach as he and thirty other Lancemen boarded the ship in double file. They were a wave of red ballistic-weave jumpsuits and gray and black armor plating, rumbling into the aircraft and settling into their crash seats.

The ramp slid up behind them, the hiss of its machinery lost in the rumbling of the gunship's engines as it lifted before the Crimson Lance troops had even strapped themselves in. Roland keyed into the company ECHO channels in his helmet using his Sergeant's clearance, but almost immediately cut the feed off; the channels were a mess of orders and questions and reports and told him nothing useful about what the hell was going on.

"What the hell's happening out there, man?" asked one of the Lancemen in his squad, a Private named Jenkins. The kid's face popped up in the corner of his helmet's HUD, a simple static picture showing an unremarkable youth with blue eyes.

"Someone's attacking the planet," replied Corporal Williams, her picture replacing Jenkins'. She had dark-tanned skin, brown eyes, and black hair. Pretty, in a beat-the-shit-out-of-you way.

"Well, yeah, I know that, but-" Jenkins continued, but cut off when Williams slashed a hand across her throat. Even with her face hidden behind her helmet, the order was clear.

"The planet is being attacked," she repeated as she double-checked her gear. They'd barely had time to grab their gear and don their armor between emergency mobilization and the order to board the transports. The rookies were just trying to get their bearings, the only thing keeping them in line being bellowing NCOs and drill.

"They'll tell us more when we need to know," Williams continued. "For right now, check your weapon and shields. Can't have them crapping out in the field."

"Williams is right," Roland ordered. "Squad, double-check your gear, I don't want a misfire because some armory bot was asleep on the job. And tighten down your ECHO mikes, we need clear comms."

The squad moved to obey. The younger rookies in the unit were quick to respond, with jerky, anxious movements, while the veterans - save Williams - did so with more lethargic efficiency, almost sullen. Some of the men under his command didn't like him, but that likely due to his reputation. The Lance were mercenaries; some were disciplined soldiers, and some were decent guys who needed a job. But many were just a step above the bandits or pirates they fought, with a vast, varied range of malicious psychopathic tendencies kept controlled by discipline, strict command and control, and the ever-present threat of a firing squad for stepping too far out of line.

He knew Williams was on his side, and despite his youth, Jenkins was a good kid. There was also Corporal Reiss. They were reliable. Of the rest of the ten-man squad, most were up in the air, save for Corporal Walkins and Private Gunnar. Those two were the troublemakers.

Roland switched between platoon and company command comms once everyone was checking equipment, and found little else that was useful. The attack had come without warning; as far as he could tell, Eden Prime's orbital defenses had been shattered and the small flotilla of Alliance ships - mostly there to keep order among the various corporate fleets as opposed to defending the planet - were getting wiped out. No one had any idea who the attackers were, but scattered reports were coming in of unidentified hostiles landing in the outskirts of the capital and surrounding woodlands and firing on anything that moved.

He frowned, uncertain, but hid the feeling from his squad by keeping his body language neutral. Eden Prime was not a lawless, corporate-controlled border planet in the Verge or Terminus. It was a primary Alliance world, with Systems Alliance ships and Marines defending it. Who would be crazy enough to attack here?

Not to mention the fact that they were boarding high-speed, long-range gun-transports. Roland and his company had been rotated away from the borderlands to Eden Prime to defend Atlas facilities on the planet. It was supposed to be a low-stress, cushy job where they only needed sidearms and light armor. Worst-case scenario, they should have been manning defensive positions around the factories and labs in the main complex, not boarding assault ships. And Roland had seen enough action in the Terminus to know that Atlas would not be deploying them to defend civilians.

A message flashed on his HUD, and Roland opened it, quashing his misgivings for the moment. Lieutenant Higgins's lean, handsome, corporate-mercenary-poster-boy face appeared on Roland's screen. The platoon commander for their three-squad unit was sitting at the front of the transport, well away from the ramp and any potential incoming fire.

"Sergeant," he said, his voice calm and controlled.

"Sir," Roland replied, respectful as he could be to a Lance ladder-climbing sack-of-corruption like Higgins.

"I'm not going to have any trouble out of you on this op, am I?" Higgins asked.

"No, sir," Roland replied to the not-too-subtle threat. He had once been a Lieutenant himself, on the fast-track to Captain, up until a few choice questions and criticisms of someone's handling of an operation had gotten him busted back down to Sergeant, and Higgins promoted in his stead. Roland had been up twice for promotion since, and both times had been denied for "insubordination."

"Good," Higgins said with a smile. "Follow my orders, and who knows. Might get your bars again."

"Yes sir," Roland said controlling his anger and resentment as best he could.

"Your squad will be first down the ramp," Higgins said. "The rest of us will be right behind you. Good luck down there."

The link closed, and he bit back a curse. First off the ramp, which meant first into enemy fire. Higgins had it in for Roland, but that cheery grudge was endangering the rest of his squad as well. Roland was tempted to just confront the Lieutenant and have a classic throwdown or gunfight to settle matters, but he was no fool. Killing a superior officer was never a good idea in any military, let alone the ones that were all too eager to toss you to a firing squad.

Another incoming message icon flashed on Roland's HUD while he fumed, and he opened it. The screen lit up, showing a white-haired man with gray hair flattened into a crewcut, with an eyepatch and a wide face and solid jawline. He was chomping on a cigar while his eyes roved over some screens just to the left of his face.

"Crimson Lance, D Company," General Alphonso Knoxx said, sounding equal parts tired, bored, and authoritative, somehow. "You have been issued orders to . . . Okay, look, I'm not going to lie to you. Planet's under attack by God's nutsack knows what."

_Yeah, guessed that much already, General._

"You've been assigned to secure a facility of vital importance from incoming invasion, blah-blah-blah, very important, etcetera. You guys know the drill." He grunted, shaking his head. "Maps, grid coordinates, and individual deployment orders are being uploaded now. Go there, kill everything that's both armed and not wearing a Lance uniform. Good luck, and cheers."

The recording ended, and Roland's blood ran cold at Knoxx's casual confirmation of their his suspicions. At least the general was honest; too many Atlas corporate suits and Lance officers tried to hide what was really going on. Roland had taken part in enough Lance operations to understand the level of corruption involved. Higgins' not-so-subtle efforts to get him killed were small-time compared with what some officers did.

If it wasn't for the fact that leaving the Lance was punishable by death, Roland would have walked long ago. As long back as the massacre on Torfan.

He shook off that memory and opened the attached files with heavy apprehension, and his guts turned to ice water. He recognized the location and schematics. They were raiding a Hyperion facility. Specifically,_the_ Hyperion facility that all those ECHONet rumors had been talking about. A Hyperion base that, if said rumors were true, contained an Eridian artifact of tremendous value.

Roland closed his eyes, and the churning unease in his stomach grew ever more intense.

* * *

...

* * *

Lilith flung herself down the corridor behind the cockpit, mind racing. She tried to remember everything her mother had taught her before the whole "Oh God, everyone's on fire, what did you do, Lily?" incident. Hannah Shepard had been insistent on her daughter learning how to survive on a spaceship that was going down, but she'd never gotten to this specific scenario.

"_Okay, Lily. This is what you do when you're on the run from every authority in the galaxy while flying a stolen Dahl cargo hauler into the middle of Alliance territory and getting attacked by unknown aliens. First step:"_

Lilith shook her head as she reached the cargo section, hands moving over her omnitool. She had a direct wireless feed to the cockpit and sensor feeds n her HUD, and thus had a full, high-resolution view of the fighters' thermal signatures as they closed in to kill her. The attackers must have spotted her thruster maneuvers to get the ship back under control, but didn't consider her important enough to bother shooting with a main gun.

A brief moment of standard paranoia shot through her as she questioned whether they were targeting her because she was an extremely rare commodity, but she dismissed that. If they knew she was a Siren they would have sent troop transports, or at least a frigate to lock down the ship until they could board it. She briefly debated whether or not to transmit her identity to the attackers, but dismissed it. Revealing her identity was a last resort.

"Okay, then, Lilith," she said as she floated through the cargo bay. An inventory of the equipment on the hauler when she'd hijacked it scrolled over her display. "They're shooting you because they're trying to take out any ships in the vicinity, but not that enthusiastic about it. They're only targeting you because you maneuvered after the first shot, proving you're still under power. Now, how to escape this lovely situation?"

A plan formed in her mind. A quick couple of commands sent the oxygen levels rising up and the compartment's air pressure increasing. She scanned the list of cargo, and smiled. Thirty seconds later, she'd located the box of blast-a-mite charges. One of the cylindrical charges, placed properly, could kill a tank. The whole box could breach a frigate's hull.

She grabbed them and carried the charges to the back of the cargo section. A quick check of the ship schematic showed her the wall closest to the reactor, as well as the outer hull, and she began setting them up. Like most corps Dahl insisted on idiot-proofing their technology so any moron could buy and use them. Thus, she could arm these bombs with a couple of button presses. _Three cheers for for-profit motivation._

A minute later, she had the charges set, and checked the sensors. The fighters were a few seconds from effective weapons range, and Lilith could see cannons charging up, glowing red spikes poking from the locust bodies. With her ship as battered as it was, a couple of passes would shred it to pieces.

Of course, she was about to do the same thing.

Lilith clambered back to the corridor and sealed the door, while accessing the reactor controls. This next part would be tricky.

The enemy fighters drew a bit closer, and she double-checked her suit seals, and glanced to the escape pod module a few meters away, across the corridor. Lilith nodded, held up the detonator, and braced. A last-second course correction brought the ship in line with the planet. She shut down the reactor, then depressed the detonator.

The ship lurched with tremendous violence, slamming her back against the bulkhead hard enough that her kinetic barriers flared and broke, and the wind was punched out of her lungs. Gasping, Lilith found the g-forces pressing her back against the bulkhead as the explosives spun the ship around, sending it an out-of-control tumble toward Eden Prime. With the increased air pressure and oxygen in the hold, the gout of fire and plasma that escaped the ship would be impressive enough to convince any observer that the whole ship had just suffered a violent internal detonation.

Well, theoretically.

What she hadn't considered was how violently the ship would react to the blast, and how the G-forces would slam her back against the wall. Grunting, Lilith pushed herself up, her entire body effectively several times heavier than it should have been. She momentarily tried reactivating internal gravity controls, before remembering that _Yeah, genius, you shut down the fucking reactor to make it look like there was a catastrophic loss of power!_

Well, the good news, at least: the fighters had peeled off, according to passive thermal sensors. They'd fallen for her ruse, convinced no one had survived, probably because no one would be stupid enough to blow their own ship in half.

_Less pessimism,_ she thought, teeth gritted, and closed her eyes. _More impossible superhuman bullshit._

Lilith opened her eyes, and beneath the form-fitting ballistic weave and ceramic plating and superconducting circuitry of her hardsuit, a complex weave of blue lines flowing up the left side of her body from toes to throat suddenly erupted into blue light. Dark energy cascaded around her, a familiar pulling sensation rippled through her body, and a heartbeat later she was no longer in the same reality.

Technically she was still there in the ship, but everything around her was filtered through a blue-gray haze, as though someone had slapped a filter onto her helmet's visor. Her arms - plus her body and armor - were transparent, glowing with a silver-white light. Arcs of electricity ran along her body, jumping from her to the bulkhead behind her - the only sign she was even present when Phasewalking.

But most important, the g-forces were no longer pressing against her.

Lilith didn't fully understand how her Siren abilities worked. She didn't even really know how she got them to trigger; it was all instinctive, like inhaling or blinking. Planetary gravity still had enough of a tug on her to keep her anchored, but it couldn't crush her while Phasewalking, anymore than fire burned her or bullets could pierce her. It all just passed through her while she was vaguely anchored to her home reality.

She pushed up and scrambled sideways toward the escape pod, her ethereal heart still pounding. She only had a few seconds before the Phasewalk broke down and she was explosively belched back into reality. The g-forces weren't crushing her anymore, but they had just enough of a tug to keep her feet anchored on the bulkhead, causing her to run along the wall toward the pod door. She reached out and grabbed the handle, starting to pull, but her hand passed right through it.

_Right. Stop panicking, Lilith._ She turned and pointed a hand away from the door, and with another inexplicably instinctive gesture, she pumped dark energy through her arm. It burst out from her fingertips in a concussive blast that would crush limbs if applied to human flesh, and the field of energy that had kept her Phased out of reality crashed down around her, exploding outward in a torrent of raging high-energy electrons. A virtual thunderstorm cascaded off of her, blackening floor panels and running along metal in every direction.

She was slammed back against the bulkhead instantly, gravity reasserting its hold with vindictive jealously. Lilith grunted through the sudden increase in weight, and twisted toward the escape pod. She dragged her arm up and threw the switch, and the locking bar slid aside. The pod door opened, and she rolled into it.

G-forces slammed her into the far wall of the pod, but her barriers had recovered enough to eat the impact, and she wasted no time. Blackness crept into the edges of her vision. Heavy arms moved over the controls, locking and sealing the pod. Lilith didn't bother strapping in, instead punching the release. The outer doors slid open, and she jammed the launch button as hard as she could.

The pod launched, and the weight vanished a heartbeat later as she was freed from the ship and sent tumbling toward the planet, the pod's own artificial gravity field taking hold.

Lilith stared at the pod's control display, exhaling, and a sudden, high-pitched giggle escaped her while she strapped in and took control of the pod.

"That was pretty awesome," she said, and kept laughing all the way to the atmosphere of Eden Prime.

* * *

...

* * *

Hyperion's facility had been built around a hill in one of Eden Prime's pristine native forests, twenty kilometers from the suburbs of Eden Prime's capital. The base had been a dig site for a particularly rich mineral vein, right up until the Eridian ruins had been unearthed. Now it resembled a corporate park, with a octagonal perimeter wall with squat guard towers around a central compound of corporate labs, walkways, and open plazas. The whole compound was painted in the gold and white colors Hyperion favored, with buildings of metal and white concrete and shiny, reflective glass. It was all very stylish, and chic, and contemporary.

It was also on fire.

The Hyperion defensive perimeter had a set of anti-air missile batteries and cannons ringing the facility. They were little more than an afterthought. This wasn't the border worlds; on Eden Prime, no corporation was going to start shooting at another one in open warfare, if only because the penalties the Alliance would level on them would bankrupt most of them, not to mention the tax incentives the Alliance would offer to the other corporations for kicking the aggressor's ass.

So Hyperion didn't ring the facility with a massive set of impenetrable defenses that could shoot down an orbiting cruiser. The smattering of automated gun batteries and missile launchers that popped up on the Atlas approach were better suited to taking down spying drones. They targeted the line of drones screening the Atlas gunships as they approached. When they started firing on the drones, the gunships located the turrets and sent guided missiles from beyond visual range to blow the batteries to pieces.

And moments later, the gunships were inside the perimeter, and their heavy guns and rocket pods were carving up the towers and doorways and anything that moved within the complex. The rumbling and pounding of the gunships' fire vibrated Roland's bones as his ship came to a halt, and the back ramp dropped. It crashed down onto a second-floor balcony of one of the compound's central buildings, the ramp crushing the guardrail.

Roland charged down the ramp, leading the way with his assault rifle shouldered. The rest of his squad piled down and fanned out onto the wide balcony. They'd drawn the shit duty of being the first down; if anyone was set up with a machinegun or other support weapon, they'd be the sacrifice to warn the rest that_ Hey, guys, look at these dismembered morons. Maybe you should go drop the rest of the troops somewhere else._

Lately, it felt like Roland's squad had drawn a lot more of these high-risk tasks than normal.

The balcony was clear, and as his squad fanned out and covered their angles, he signaled for the rest of the platoon. Two more squads pounded down after him, and the moment they were on the ground the gunship lifted and pulled away. Thirty Lancemen spread out along the wide balcony, a wave of red ballistic weave and black and white armor.

"First and Second, on me," Lieutenant Higgins ordered. "Third, secure the entrance. Make me proud, boys!"

Roland acknowledged and took his men into the compound. They moved through an open doorway into a corridor lined by offices separated by reflective glass windows and chic, stylish corporate office decorations that were cheerfully oppressive in that way that only Hyperion could manage. The two troopers with the big, hefty tower shields - Jenkins and Spinolo - took the lead, submachineguns in their right hands. Their route would take them down this hallway and to the left, where they would have a good firing position on anyone attempting to enter through the main courtyard.

His ECHO comm channel sounded with reports of contacts by the other two squads as they moved through the facility, and gunfire sounded on the levels above them. Hyperion's troops were not sleeping on the job, and were fighting back hard. There were already reports of casualties coming in.

They reached the end of the corridor, and Jenkins and Spinolo stepped out into the intersection. Jenkins turned to the left and then dropped into a crouch behind his shield.

"Contact!" he shouted, and bullets smashed into the shield, a couple skipping off his kinetic barriers. Spinolo leapt out into the corridor, bringing his own shield up and moving across the hallway to split up incoming fire.

"Turret going out!" Roland shouted, pulling a cylinder as wide as his upper arm off his belt, flicking a switch, and tossing it out into the passage beside Jenkins. As soon as it left his fingers it unfolded and lengthened into a meter-long turret. One end oriented down and spread out into a base, latching to the floor, while the other end extended out into a long-barreled cannon. The moment it secured itself to the floor, the Scorpio turret deployed a semi-circular static kinetic barrier around it.

Roland ducked behind his turret's shield, rifle shouldered, and sighted down the hallway as the rest of his squad poured into the corridor. A quartet of Hyperion soldiers was less than twenty meters down the hall, clad in the distinctive heavy, angular, blocky armor they favored, faced hidden behind blank visors with glowing red optical goggles. Roland sighted one in his rifle's scope and squeezed the trigger.

The noise of raging gunfire was savage and nearly deafening. The Hyperion troops hurled down flat, circular discs that unfolded into gun turrets of their own, while Roland's squad poured gunfire down the passage and the other Engineer troopers dropped Scorpio turrets to support them. Tracers screamed back and forth, chunks of walls and stylish Hyperion furniture blasted to powder and dust. The soldier Roland targeted stumbled and fell as his shields collapsed and rounds tore through his chest.

The remaining Hyperion soldiers were disciplined and well-equipped, but the Lancemen had numbers and raw firepower on their side. Outnumbered more than two to one, the Hyperion troops were overwhelmed within a few seconds, and went down amid a river of gunfire before they could really find any cover.

The corridor went silent, and Roland checked the squad's biometrics as he collapsed and recovered his turret. He blinked in surprise. No casualties. They'd wiped out the Hyperion troops before the enemy had been able to deplete anyone's shields.

A couple of the Lancemen started laughing at their fortune, with Gunnar cheering.

"That's why you don't fuck with me!" he shouted, pumping his rifle in the air.

"Tighten up and quiet down," Roland ordered, his voice sharp. They went silent, Gunnar glaring at his squadleader with what was almost certainly sullen anger behind his helmet. "Come on, we've got work to do, and killing a few Hyperion thugs doesn't mean we're invincible. Reload if you need it and move out."

He started down the corridor, and the rest of the Lancemen followed, those with conventional-ammo weapons reloading, a sullen silence following them.

His ECHO chirped, and he answered it as he took point, Jenkins beside him. Williams' face appeared on his HUD.

"Sarge," she said, her voice quiet, barely audible even over the ECHO.

"Yeah?" he replied, keeping his voice low too.

"Watch Gunnar. I think he's looking for a promotion on top of your corpse. I caught him talking to the LT just before we launched. Real suspicious."

"He'll turn on me sooner or later," Roland agreed. "I'm counting you to watch my back, Ash."

"You got it, Sarge."

He smiled beneath his helmet. He knew he could count on Williams. And while Higgins and Gunnar were an ever-present threat, he could deal with them.

After Torfan, well . . . After that massacre, Roland could deal with anything.

* * *

...

* * *

Entering atmosphere in an escape pod was never fun, and this one was worse than usual. After all, she was angling the escape pod to land inside a secure Hyperion perimeter. Hyperion wasn't likely to shoot her down, considering that that they really didn't want to pay the fines the Alliance would level on a corp that shot down a civilian escape pod.

But she wasn't one hundred percent certain on that, so Lilith braced herself to Phasewalk if she saw any incoming fire, and hoped she would be able to execute before the pod was blown to pieces.

No fire lanced up at her as she descended, but as she drop, the reason for the lack of fire did not make her any happier. The pod's cameras showed several fat-bellied gunships hovering over the compound, all bearing that happy, friendly, fascist red spear logo of the Crimson Lance. Tiny, red-and-black figures moved through the compound as well.

"Figures Atlas would make a move right when I arrive," she muttered. "And, well, whoever these other jackasses are in orbit."

The escape pod continued to descend, firing its retro-rockets to slow it down. At about a thousand meters up, one of the gunships turned toward her, topside gun turret rising to track her.

"Oh, no you're not," she muttered, and Lilith patted herself down, making sure her pistol and submachinegun were still fixed to her armor. They were. A glance at her SDU readout showed the other weapons she carried in storage were ready in case she needed them. She finished checking at six hundred meters.

Oh yes, it turned out, they were. The gunship opened fire at five hundred meters. Lilith cursed as tracer rounds ripped past, and hammered the override for the pod's door. It blew open and whipped away, air rushing past her.

Four hundred meters.

Lilith grit her teeth, and then smiled, an idea striking her. A particularly insane idea, but, well, that was the norm. She crouched, and at three hundred meters, leapt.

The gunship's fire tracked into the descending pod and blew it apart at two hundred and fifty meters, and she started laughing in exhilaration as she fell, debris raining past her.

At two hundred meters, the gun turret rotated toward her, and Lilith raised a hand in a one-fingered salute as she angled her descent toward her target.

Lightning burst around her as she Phasewalked.

She fell, yanked toward the surface of Eden Prime by gravity. No longer affected by wind resistance, Lilith descended at frightening speed. One hundred and fifty. One hundred and twenty-five. One hundred. The Atlas gunship leapt up toward her, and she clenched her fist while twisting to bring her legs underneath her.

The gunship hovered about a hundred meters above the surface, and she hit with both feet, coming to a dead stop with barely a jolt of impact. _Yay for ignoring kinetic energy._ She grinned, lightning cascading off her phased body, and then punched down into the reflective amrorglass under her feet. Dark energy screamed down her fist and into the gunship's cockpit. The blast of power cracked the armorglass over the cockpit.

The phaseblast a heartbeat afterward smashed it in like an antipersonnel mine, shredding the startled pilot and crumpling the front half of the gunship. The VTOL aircraft whirled about, tumbling out of control, and Lilith held on as it fell. The vehicle shuddered as it spun, parts of the stricken aircraft flying off. A few Crimson Lance in the courtyard below stared up at her and the battered vehicle whirling about overhead. She waved at them while the gunship spun about, and then leapt off.

Lilith grit her teeth as she fell, concentrating, and triggered another Phasewalk as she dropped. She immediately felt the material world yanking back on her as she fell, the second Phasewalk occurring far too close to the previous one to last very long. Lightning streaked off of her, and she tumbled toward the planet below in a disoriented bundle. Lilith hit the tiled stone and concrete of the courtyard hard.

Or, well, she would have hit hard if silly things like kinetic energy mattered to her while phased out of reality. Instead she just stopped when she hit the ground, with the barest hint of any impact running through her body, just like with the gunship. Lilith scrambled to her feet and released her phased state, and a burst of lightning and force rippled off of her, cracking the courtyard around her and sending the Lancemen scrambling away from the detonation.

For a moment, she considering not doing it, but _with a what the hell_ shrug, Lilith reached up and yanked off her helmet. Bright red hair spilled out, and for a heartbeat, the Lancemen could see the glowing blue tattoos running up her neck, and her golden, shining irises. With her free hand, she drew and unfolded her pistol, then smiled at them when the lights faded.

"'Sup."

The gunship she'd just punchsploded out of the air crashed into the wall behind her, backlighting her with a brilliant explosion and whipping shrapnel.

The Lancemen's weapons shot up, one them screaming in terror as he realized he was face to face with_a freaking Siren_. But Lilith was already firing her pistol into one mercenary's faceplate, a feral grin spreading over her face.

She was tired of being low profile anyway.

* * *

...

* * *

_**Codex - People - Sirens**_

_The term "Siren" is used to refer to a small number of extremely rare females who have been affected by contact with Eridian technology. Sirens possess unusual capability to affect the phase state of the environment around them, allowing them to control kinetic, electromagnetic, and dark energy. Other Siren abilities include being able to corrode objects surrounding them, control machinery, or manipulate Eridian technology._

_Sirens are born with their powers, and can be identified by markings across their bodies that resemble Eridian script, which glow while manifesting their powers. The majority of recorded Sirens have also been noted as being generally physically ideal specimens of their respective species._

_Translated Eridian script indicates that only six of the "gifted" can exist at any given time, though precisely why this is the case is unclear. What has been confirmed is that only six Sirens have ever existed at any one time for each species, and always manifest in the female gender._

_Sirens have, historically, been regarded with either reverence or fear, or both when the situation demands it. Most Sirens are targeted by governments or corporations for research into Eridian technology, but the nature of their Phase powers makes it difficult to contain or study them against their will. Most Sirens spend the majority of their lives avoiding contact with the larger galactic civilization._

* * *

_..._

* * *

_**Author's Notes: **__No Gods, Only Guns_ is the result of playing too much Borderlands and writing way too much serious, grimdark fiction. This story is, well, not so much light-hearted as it is much more humorous. I'm hoping to combine both the grand space opera/political thriller that is Mass Effect with the violent, over-the-top ball of absurdist humor, meta-humor, and badassery that is Borderlands. Plus, ME and Borderlands do have a strong, convergent theme that is summed up by this story's title: Mecha-Cthulhu may be out there, and he may want to eat your face, but if you have a big enough gun, you can kick his eldritch, multidimensional ass.

In case you were wondering, yes, Lilith and Roland are, essentially, Female and Male Shepard respectively. Lilith is, of course, more Renegade while Roland is naturally more Paragon.

And never fear: There will be Claptrap. _Lots_ of Claptrap.

Until next chapter . . . .


	2. Chapter 2: Rules of Engagement

_**Archive: Council Meeting 2/1/2339**_

**Subject: Batarian Hegemony accusations of Systems Alliance aggression in Attican Travers**e

**Excerpt: 2412.33 to 2415.12 Hours**

**Excerpt begins:**

**Batarian High Ambassador Gorval Balton:** This is an insult and a crime against sapience! I can't believe you're even debating whether this is an act of war! I demand intervention and sanctions against the Systems Alliance!

**Systems Alliance Ambassador Donnel Udina:** I resent these accusations_. (pause while adjusting eyepatch)_ They are patently untrue.

**Councilor Tevos:** Please explain, Ambassador. We have seen the recordings from the batarian colony worlds. The violence against batarian colonists is undeniable.

**Ambassador Udina:** The "colonies" in question are unclaimed worlds open to development for any species, not just human and batarian. We are not responsible for the actions of a minority of our species that refuse to acknowledge the Alliance's authority. And most of the attacks have been against mercenary enclaves, pirate bases, or Hegemony military outposts, not civilian centers.

**Ambassador Balton:** Lies! We have proof that these so-called "bandits" are operating out of Alliance facilities-

**Ambassador Udina:** Low income housing facilities built to help with rehabilitation_. (pause as prosthetic hand taps on lectern)_ You are all aware of how the Alliance struggles to maintain control over our species' genetic predispositions toward violence, and how our rampant physical mutations correlate with psychopathic tendencies. Many of the unfortunate inhabitants of these ramshackle colonies are those who suffered the worst genetic damage. They require extensive treatment to be reintegrated into society, and we cannot do that on our core worlds-

**Ambassador Balton:** Rehabilitation? Is that what you call it when you dump thousands of these genetic mutants on a planet and stand aside as they cut a swathe through batarian outposts?

**Ambassador Udina:** -and many citizens of the Alliance are already reconsidering their opinions about their mutant relatives, so our plan is already showing some signs of success.

**Ambassador Balton:** This is a declaration of war, Councilors! If these attacks on Hegemony interests do not-

**Ambassador Udina:** So you admit culpability in the pirate raids on human space, then?

**Ambassador Balton: **What?

**Ambassador Udina:** Because of the eleven systems you have cited as being the sites of this "unprovoked aggression", four are known batarian pirate havens, and two more are confirmed sites of slave trading. These "bandit" raids on these worlds have exclusively targeted the bases of these criminal scum; the only reason we allowed them to continue at all instead of intervening directly was because no one particularly cared for the criminals in question. I was, honestly, surprised that you lumped these worlds in with the rest.

**Councilor Velarn:** Curious. _(beeping from fingers manipulating haptic interface)_ Yes, our own records from the STG recon into the Terminus supports this. Six of the eleven worlds where these attacks were reported were exclusively criminal havens. Ambassador, what made you believe that we would confuse these for actual colony worlds? While human insanity is quite well-documented, I would expect more thorough fact-checking from your own-

**Ambassador Balton:** _(incoherent shout) (impact from lectern being ripped out of its stand and hurled across the room) _

_**End of Record**_

* * *

_**Chapter Two: Rules of Engagement**_

Roland spread his squad out on the landing overlooking the western entrance. A service road meandered up the side of the hill, and the main wall of the Hyperion facility blocked off view from the service road into the rest of the base. Anyone entering would not be able to see the gunships hovering on the other side of the complex, though they could easily hear the engines and spot the rising smoke.

He could still hear gunfire back inside the compound, and several hollow explosions sounded over the course of a few seconds. There was a tremendous crash and detonation on the far end of the base.

"Man, they're fighting back hard over there," Jenkins murmured.

"That doesn't sound like Hyperion," Williams commented. "There shouldn't be any Hyperion troops outside, not with the gunships overhead."

Roland nodded and keyed his ECHO. He switched frequencies, hearing reports from other platoon commanders as they swept the interior. He frowned, trying to remember which unit was securing the eastern end-

"-tearing us apart!" someone suddenly screamed, and Roland flinched at the volume. "Half the squad is down! She fucking blew up a gunship! We need back_AAAAAAUGH!_"

A roaring howl filled the speaker, and Roland could hear another echoing explosion. He switched frequencies to another squad in the same platoon.

"Repeat, Second Squad is down!" the squad leader was calling.

"How many hostiles?" Called the platoon commander. "Who are they? Hyperion? Alliance?"

"Sir, it's-" A paused, gunfire sounding over the ECHO, and more screams. "Sir, it's just one person!"

"Confirm that!"

"Confirm it, sir," another voice called. "One woman. It's -" Another explosion. "Shit! Sir, it's a fucking Siren!"

"Repeat that! Did you say the contact is a Siren?"

"A Siren, sir! She's-" the call was cut off by another scream. "Oh, God! Everything is on fire! Especially the parts that can't burn! _AUUUUUUGH!"_

"Run or burn, bitch!" a woman's voice shouted distantly over the ECHO, before it cut out.

"Well, that's some bad news," Roland muttered, switching channels.

"Sarge?" asked Williams.

"We're not the only ones smashing and grabbing," he said, and was surprised at how calm he sounded despite the extremely bad news. His heart pounded in his chest as he spoke. "There's a Siren attacking the base too."

He changed to Higgins' channel in the shocked silence that followed, and signaled the platoon leader.

"Sir, this is Roland. We've reports of a Siren inside the perimeter. How copy?"

"Yeah, I heard," Higgins replied a second later. A rattle of gunfire sounded on his end. "We've got it under control."

Something exploded in the general direction of the Siren, and Roland heard another gunship spin out of control and crash with a resounding explosion.

"Sounds like it," he replied, deadpan.

"We can do without your sarcasm, Sergeant," Higgins barked. "Company is moving troops to intercept. Just cover your sector. You see anyone not wearing a Lance uniform, you shoot. Understood?"

"Yes sir," Roland replied. Higgins closed his end, and Roland exhaled. He looked over their positions over the gate, noting their formation was Lance-standard: two teams with interlocking fields of fire, Defenders up front, support guns and Engineers in the back, a rifleman on security on either flank. Their position was secure.

But the unease in his stomach refused to abate. The Siren was ugly news indeed, but far from surprising. He'd been expecting trouble; Dahl and Torgue-Urdnot also had facilities on the planet, with commandos ready to deploy, not to mention whoever had the stones to attack an Alliance core world. There was only one reason to risk an attack on Eden Prime, and that reason was sitting deep in this base's labs. And once again, Atlas was putting the hunger for profit over, well, everything else.

_Shouldn't be surprised that we attacked now,_ he thought. _Human nature. The moment the cops are distracted, we start breaking into each other's houses to loot their stuff._

But questioning Atlas' motives had ended with him wearing a Sergeant's rank pins, instead of a Lieutenant's. He'd joined the Lance to protect people, but he spent more time on missions like this - pointless raids on other corporations, or enforcing the company's will on civilian taxpayers - than protecting those people.

Despite being rested, well-fed, and alert, Roland was dead tired.

"Sir," Ashley called, breaking him out of his moping. Roland shook his head and jogged over to the Corporal. The Lanceman was peering down the slope of the road through her rifle's scope, and he raised his own, following her movement.

"Dammit," he hissed.

Maybe two hundred meters down, a gray camouflage-painted, six-wheeled vehicle shaped like an upside-down spade with a low, long-barreled gun turret had come to a halt. Soldiers dismounted from hatches in the sides, wearing dark blue and black hardsuits. They unfolded rifles - Hahne-Kedar standard, collapsible mass accelerator variants. They all had SDU packs on their backs, likely holding their digistruct gear and ammo.

He recognized the weapons, armor, and camo scheme, and the sight made him curse immediately.

"I've got a shot on the vehicle," Gunnar said. He'd set his rifle aside, and had produced a heavy rocket launcher from his storage deck unit. It was an older Torgue-Urdnot model, jet black, rectangular, ugly and unsubtle. He peered down the scope, ready to fire. "One word and that Mako is scrap."

"Hold your fire," Roland ordered, shaking his head.

_Dammit, not now._

The squad of Systems Alliance Marines spread out and advanced up the slope, unaware of the Lancemen watching them from above. They took cover along the road, scanning the entrance, and one of them pressed a hand to the side of his helmet, speaking into his own ECHO communicator.

"They're reconnoitering," Ashley murmured. "Probably trying to see if the beacon is secure. If they figure out that the Lance is here, attacking this place-"

"Yeah, I know," Roland said, thinking furiously. They all knew that the fines the Alliance would level on a corp attacking another on a core world were horribly heavy. Higgins had given him orders to shoot on sight, and if they could kill these soldiers now, that might slow down the Alliance response long enough to let the Lance withdraw unseen in the chaos of the larger attack.

But that would require him to open fire on Alliance Marines.

Ice churned in his gut. He had his orders, but dammit . . . .

* * *

The complex had once been the height of Hyperion ascetic corporate chic fashion. Shiny reflective glass, white and gold painted walls, minimalist furniture, neat and orderly rows of offices arranged with laser precision. Lilith Shepard, free spirit that she was, found the whole thing vaguely offensive, at least before the shooting started. The blood and black scorch marks and trails of burnt paint from lightning discharges improved the décor, in her estimation.

She charged from room to room, the Maliwan submachinegun in her hands chattering out a constant stream of red tracers, the air shimmering from the heat ripping out from the weapon's bullets. Each round fired sent the tiniest jolt through her that had nothing to do with recoil, and the bullets gleamed brighter and burned hotter as they tore into the Lance troopers down the hall, melting armor and setting them ablaze. She didn't know precisely why Sirens had that effect on the elemental machinery in the weapon, but she could feel the black-box tech reacting to her and the dark energy rushing through her body.

And Lilith didn't need to know _how_ it worked in order to use it to deadly effect.

A lance soldier flailed about a few meters away, his clothing ablaze. She ran past him as he screaming, firing a short burst into the mercenary's head to put him out of his misery. She swept her weapon up as she sidestepped into another office door, firing another burst at two more Lance troops advancing down the hallway, their weapons roaring in the confined space. Despite the way she was tearing through them, and their screams of terror and agony as she burned them down, they kept on coming with that legendary tenacity. Near-misses tore chunks of gold-and-white masonry out of the walls, while closer rounds impacted her shields. She slid into cover as the magazine ran empty.

Lilith grabbed the spinning, disc-shaped magazine off the side of the weapon. Maliwan guns were odd: sleek and elegant designs with a chrome finish and gleaming lights and those weird spinning disc magazines that looked more like OSDs than actual ammunition containers. The lights dimmed as she removed the disc and slid another into the slot on the side of the weapon. She spun it around to cycle the next round in, and it lit back up.

The Lance advanced, firing their weapons, shouting to one another over the roar of their weapons. She counted at least four guns now, all of them putting suppressing fire into the doorframe, the masonry shattering under the barrage.

Lilith grinned and stepped out of reality with a hollow roar of energy and cascading electricity. She stepped out of the doorway and dashed forward in a movement that wasn't precisely running; her boots did not push off the ground, and bullets fired by the Lancemen passed right through her. She moved with darting speed, her legs pumping more out of automatic, thoughtless muscle memory than any need. She rushed down the hallway, energy sweeping through her in a torrent on brilliant power, and as she passed between the Lance soldiers, lightning cascaded over them. Blue-white arcs sliced along their armor, sending those men twitching and screaming in surprise. Their shields flared and burst as the lightning burned out or overloaded the projectors mounted into their armor.

The glorious howl of her power intensified, beating against her, threatening to overwhelm her, and she ducked into a doorway behind the Lancemen. One mercenary was crouching in the room, in the middle of changing his rifle's magazine when he found himself caught in a burst of electrical fury. She reached out and touched him, hand stopping against the solid matter of his helmet, and pumped the current of dark energy through her fingertips into his head.

The burst of raw power knocked his head backward, and the hollow explosion of lightning and swirling purple-tinged force hurled him across the office to crash into the far wall. He flopped to the floor, smoke rising from his body and a deep dent in the wall. Lilith whirled, submachinegun rising to her shoulder, and stepped out of the doorway. The Lance were spinning around, reacting to the explosion behind them with the efficiency of discipline augmented by sheer, heart-pounding terror.

That adrenaline-fueled speed wasn't enough. Not against a Siren less than a couple of meters behind them, eyes shining gold behind her helmet's visor, and grinning at the euphoric tingle of power. Lilith hosed them at point-blank range, incendiary rounds sweeping over the Lance and searing through flesh and armor. They didn't have time to scream.

_I'm really damned good at this_, she thought with a smile, and that was chased by a bit of shame. Her mother wouldn't approve of that kind of thought - not while cutting down sapients, mercenary or otherwise. Of course, Hannah Shepard had never approved of mercenary work or adventuring, but it wasn't like Lilith had many career choices open to her after she set half a cruiser on fire-

Rounds deflected off her shields from behind, breaking her out of that thought, and Lilith ducked back behind cover as the Lancemen advanced. She whirled on the new shooters, counting three more Lance troops, one with a heavy metal shield and two with rifles. She squeezed off return fire at the Lance Defender, but most of the burst deflected off the shield, careening wildly around the corridor. The other two Lancemen fired staggered bursts at the Siren as they backed down the hallway toward the far end.

Lilith dropped back into cover, her shield beeping in warning, and narrowed her eyes. She realized what was happening and swapped disc magazines quickly.

The Lance were not stupid, corporate idiocy commanding them aside. They knew they couldn't beat a Siren head-to-head. They were retreating to the door to seal it off.

Like hell, she thought. The power surging through her was intense; it had been only seconds since her last Phasewalk, and she couldn't hold it for long. Lilith grit her teeth and stepped out of reality, the doorway deforming under the blast, and bolted down the corridor. The enemy scrambled backward; they were learning fast. Lilith charged straight at the Defender, the glorious energy sending spikes of pain through her as she charged him. She closed in less than a couple of seconds, the pain intensifying, and released the energy into the Lance soldier's shield. He was hurled away by the explosion, and Lilith charged through the corona of lightning, her submachinegun blazing, figuratively and literally.

The last two Lancemen turned and fled, not even bothering with covering fire. Bright red lines sliced down the hallway from Lilith's Maliwan, deflecting off the blue body-sheaths of their shields. At least one got through, and the Lance trooper's legs erupted into flames, but both men managed to leap through the doorway. Lilith cursed and started after them, but she got only a couple of steps before the non-flaming soldier hit the console by the door.

Heavy security doors slammed shut and sealed with a cheery beep, barely audible over the burning man's screams, and Lilith dug in her heels. She muttered a few choice words under her breath as a perky, recorded voice announced, _"Security doors sealed. All hostile intruders should shoot themselves in the head or other appropriate organ now, to save everyone the trouble."_

Lilith brought up the facility map on her HUD, looking for an alternate route. She was relying on speed and shock right now, and knew that every second she gave the Lance to react to her presence, the harder it was going to get. Not to the point where it would be impossible of course; she was confident that she could kick the Crimson Lance's collective asses, but it would be easier if she had momentum on her side. There had to be a way around this barrier.

There was, if the schematic was right. She backtracked down the bullet-riddled hallway, hopping over the charred corpses of the Lancemen who had stood in her way, and found a side corridor that ran to a maintenance section. She descended a flight of stairs into a more dimly-lit section of the building, the gold-and-white Hyperion color scheme giving way to utilitarian gray, and at the bottom of the steps she found a maintenance garage.

She slowed as she reached the doorway, sweeping the gray, concrete room, and grimaced. The Lance had already been here, and while there were no human bodies, corpses still littered the room. Boxy shapes were scattered across the garage floor, in pools of oil and smashed components. Their frames would have come up to her waist if they were standing up on the single wheels at the base of each machine. A single circular mechanical camera was mounted on the front of each of the bullet-riddled machines, and narrow, spindly arms protruded from their sides. A few hovercraft and maintenance vehicles sat on one side of the high-ceilinged room, mostly disassembled and ignored.

Lilith recognized the robots' model: Hyperion CL4P-TP general service robots. Commonly called "Claptraps." They were fairly advanced and intelligent, and were used for all manner of support jobs, which made them as useful as human workers - and a lot more expendable. The Lancemen hadn't shown them any mercy, gunning down the robots and moving on. It was SOP on operations like this, she had learned; general purpose bots were just as potentially dangerous as humans depending on their systems access.

That, and CL4P-TPs had a default programming that made them _annoying as hell_.

Lilith moved through the room quickly, spotting no signs of movement. The garage connected to another section of the complex which doubled around to the lab sector, where they were keeping the Eridian artifact, If she moved quickly - and if they hadn't sealed that door too - she could catch them. But she suspected that whoever was in command had enough active braincells to lock down all the doors leading to the labs. Still, there had to be some way to access the labs, through maintenance passages. Worst came to worst, she could just tear down the doors with a few Phaseblasts, though she was loathe to do that-

Something clattered against the floor from the direction of the disassembled vehicles: a sharp ringing of metal on concrete. Lilith whipped around, Maliwan rising to her shoulder, and prepared to Phasewalk.

There was movement behind the vehicle, and a boxy shaped leaned around the side of the car, a single, green-glowing optic peeking at her and then jerking back behind cover.

"Oh God!" a high-pitched mechanical voice squealed. "Please don't shoot! Please don't shoot! I'll wipe my memory and shut down and walk your dog and whatever else you want just don't shoot!"

Lilith exhaled, relaxing, and lowered her weapon.

"I'm not going to shoot you," she muttered.

"Really?" the Claptrap asked. The mechanical voice sounded surprised. It poked its eye and upper body around the vehicle. "You don't _want_ to shoot me?"

Lilith shook her head. Shooting Claptraps wasn't uncommon; their frames were tough enough to take the occasional shot from a pistol, and as annoying as the things could be, it wasn't surprising that one would be confused at someone _not _wanting to abuse it.

"You might want to clear out of here, though," she added as she moved across the room. "I left a path of charred jackasses that way. If you want to make a run for it, get moving."

She reached the far side of the room, and stopped, looking back at the boxy machine as it slowly rolled out of cover and peered around the room. The Claptrap's eye lingered on the scattered remnants of its fellows. Now that she had a better look at it, she could see the Claptrap had the same coloration as the rest of the units, a faded yellow paintjob with some white stripes.

She shook her head at the pitiful sight, and moved through the door. The next couple of hallways were empty, save a couple of wrecked Claptraps. The minimap guided her into another large room, this one a small warehouse holding mining equipment. Hyperion resistance had intensified here: two dead Lancemen lay at the entryway, and the remains of several Hyperion combat loaders lay scattered about, the skeletal robots blasted into pieces. One lay intact; its gold-and black-painted body was riddled with bullets, and it was vaguely humanoid, but instead of a head it had a cyclops camera-eye mounted in the center of its chest, like the Claptraps. Its assault rifle was still held in in its spindly fingers.

A faint screeching howl of something descending at high speed sounded outside, followed by a dull _whump_ from outside the building. Lilith jerked her weapon up out of reflex, cursing at the familiar sound. It was an orbital drop; she'd heard it often enough on the border worlds when Hyperion dropped loaders and other mechs from overhead. But there was something off about this impact. It was lighter and faster, as if they were dropping something smaller than a loader. And a moment later, twenty more impacts sounded, a rumbling barrage of shuddering crashes coming from multiple directions around the building.

As the noise filled her ears, Lilith remembered another detail: Corporations weren't permitted any orbital deployment equipment on Alliance core worlds. Whoever was dropping this wasn't Hyperion, and that only left two possibilities: the Alliance itself, or the unknowns in orbit.

Lilith cursed viciously and ran to the door leading out of the warehouse. She found a corridor beyond and charged down it at full speed, following her minimap and watching for hostiles. The map led her down another branching corridor, and she spun around the corner, her weapon ready in case the Lance were waiting.

She dug her heels into the floor, frustration filling her as she saw the Lance had done one better: a heavy blast door had sealed over the door at the end of the hallway.

"Dammit," she hissed. There was a control panel next to the door, and she jammed the glowing green "OPEN" button in vain hope that the Lance who had locked this door were particular idiots. They weren't.

"Okay, Plan B," she said, and prepared to rip the door down with phenomenal cosmic power.

"So, uh, need help with that?" asked a high-pitched mechanical voice. She glanced back over her shoulder and found the Claptrap from before leaning around the corner.

"Yeah," Lilith admitted, releasing the power she was touching. "The Lance locked the door down."

"Ha!" the Claptrap said, rolling around the corner, arms raised in triumph. "I was made to open doors! Especially Hyperion doors! I am the master of unlocking doors! This door is my bi-"

"Yeah, can you get it open for me?" Lilith asked. The Claptrap stopped in front of the panel, and the thin little arms began tapping away at the controls under the primary open-close button.

"If I can help someone get payback on those jerkbags for killing my fellows, I'm happy to!" it said with the same cheery voice. Lilith thought it was trying to sound vindictive.

"I'd do it myself if I could," it added, tapping away more furiously. "I wouldn't mind paying back those fascist armored jerkbags for murdering my entire lot number-" Its volume rose and it smacked the controls more furiously, "-and teabagging their corpses, and set every one of their robot-killing fleshy asses on fire, and then leak excess motor oil on the ashes, and then _laugh at my obvious mechanical superiority-"_

The door shot up without warning, and the Claptrap jumped up and down for a moment. Lilith raised an eyebrow, wondering how it was able to do that with only one wheel,

"And OPEN, _bitch!"_ it shouted.

The Claptrap then went still and turned toward Lilith, who was staring at the robot. A spindly arm moved around, mechanical fingers making a fist just below the eye, and very deliberate mechanical cough sounded.

"But I'm not programmed to use weapons," it added.

"I don't need another gun hand," Lilith assured it. _Or a possibly psychotic murder machine_. "Just stay behind me in case they lock another door in our way." She started into the room beyond, sweeping for hostiles. It was clear, and as the Claptrap rolled after her, she paused. "But stay back. You don't want to get caught in the blast."

"Blast?" the Claptrap asked, puttering behind her into the lobby.

A trio of Crimson Lance charged into the lobby from the far door, rifles and submachineguns raised. They shouted in alarm as she spotted her, and Lilith grinned, touching that endless well of energy, her eyes shining gold and shields flaring as the first rounds slammed into it.

"The blast from my pure _awesome_," she said, and Phasewalked into the enemy in a torrent of lightning and fury.

* * *

Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko crouched among the boulders and rock walls outside the sheer, corporate chic doom fortress that was the Hyperion mining facility. His skin tingled; the electrical charge from his biotics pulsing over the element zero nodes embedded in his nervous system. The smoke rising above the building and distant rumbling engines of aircraft told him that all was definitely not well, and the periodic explosions and gunfire inside the compound punctuated that certainty.

"No, sir," Kaidan muttered into his ECHO. On his helmet's display, the face of Captain David Anderson scowled. "I haven't confirmed who is attacking the site. Could be the hostiles in orbit, but I haven't made visual contact."

"Understood, Lieutenant," the Captain replied. He was relatively safely removed from the combat on the ground, in orbit aboard the _SSV London_. The cruiser had originally come to the system to carrying a team to "convince" Hyperion that it would be a good idea to turn the artifact over to the Alliance and the Citadel, but the alien fleet that had suddenly attacked had ruined that plan in a torrent of mass accelerator fire. The Alliance fleet was regrouping after the initial beating they'd taken from the invaders, and the _London_ had joined them after deploying Kaidan and his squad to the surface to reach the Hyperion base.

Someone had beaten them there, though who was unclear. Scattered reports indicated that the invaders had been dropping troops onto the planet, but this didn't seem like them. This looked disturbingly like a corporate raid.

_Yeah, human nature. The moment the guards are looking the wrong way, the asylum starts ripping itself apart._

"No response from the Hyperion personnel inside," Kaidan continued. "I can attempt an entry. We can scale those walls or try to force open the gates with explosives."

"Just get inside and recover that device, Lieutenant," Anderson ordered.

"Yes sir," Kaidan replied, and waved his team forward. "First fire team advance. Second fire team, cover."

He started forward, moving from boulder to boulder up the road. The first fire team reached cover about fifty meters from the gate, taking position and scanning for threats, while the second team started up the road toward them.

His ECHO chirped, and static buzzed over the video feed that would show whoever was speaking.

"Attention, Alliance Marines," barked a strong, authoritative male voice. "Be advised: You are entering a secure zone. Unauthorized personnel will be repelled."

The second fire team went to cover immediately, and the Marines began scanning even more intently for enemy shooters. Kaidan keyed his ECHO, and the biotic tingle in his skin intensified.

"This is Lieutenant Alenko, Alliance Marines, _SSV London_ detachment," he demanded. "Identify yourself."

"Not that stupid, Lieutenant," the voice replied. "Please remain outside the perimeter of the facility. Approaching any closer will provoke a response."

"LT, got some movement," one of the Marines whispered. "Over the gate. That tower. See it?"

Kaidan followed the laser marker from the Marine's rifle, and spotted the tower in question, about seventy-five meters away and poking over the top of the wall. There was vague movement, but when he zoomed in, he couldn't make out anything specific. The shooters were well hidden.

"You're obviously not Hyperion security," Kaidan called over the ECHO. "In case you didn't notice, there's a fleet in orbit and an alien army attacking the planet. We're all theoretically on the same side. Stand down and let us enter the facility, or the situation will get more complicated than either of us would like. What do you say?"

* * *

"I say we blast 'em to shit, _like we were ordered_, Sarge," Gunnar hissed, still sighting the rocket launcher. "I got four rounds in the magazine. I can take out most of 'em before they know what hit 'em and then we can pick off the rest."

Roland didn't reply. He grit his teeth for a moment, brows bunching in concentration behind his mask, and shook his head.

"Lieutenant," he replied into his ECHO, "I don't think either of us want this to escalate." He paused, and decided to cut the crap. "If you advance, we will be forced to fire on you."

"You and I don't want that," Alenko replied. "But if you open fire on Alliance Marines, you and whoever you work for will be charged under the-"

"Lieutenant," Roland cut him off, "Do you seriously think whoever I work for gives a damn about Alliance law at this point?"

"This is bullshit," Gunnar snarled. "We have our orders. I bet if this was Torfan, we wouldn't be-"

"Corporal, you will be quiet, keep that weapon sighted, and keep that finger off the trigger, or I will shoot you myself," Roland snapped. Gunnar went silent at the threat, and Roland sighed in relief; sometimes, the Lance's harsh discipline enforcement was a boon.

"Sounds like you're having trouble keeping your people under control," Alenko commented over the ECHO.

Roland grit his teeth again and ignored the jab. His mind worked furiously, trying to find a solution that wouldn't end in bloodshed. If the Marines advanced, his men would _have _to fire on them. Unless Roland ordered them to stand down, which would mean summary execution for disobeying orders, assuming they weren't arrested by the Alliance. Not to mention that even speaking to these Marines was a breach of his orders to shoot on sight.

But as the seconds passed, he became more and more certain that if the Marines pressed forward, he would not order his Lance squad to fire. But if Gunnar or another loose or jumpy Lanceman hit the trigger, he wouldn't be able to stop the bloodbath that would ensue. And if any of the Marines got off a message that they were being fired on, the Alliance would send a lot more firepower their way, and they wouldn't stop to talk politely.

"More movement," Williams reported, and Roland peered through his scope, heart jumping through his throat. He saw the Marines rising, hand signals going back and forth, and-

They pulled back. One by one, the Alliance troops moved back down the road, running from cover to cover in a classical ordered withdrawal.

"I can hit 'em, Sarge," Gunnar hissed. "They're moving in the open. The LT gave us orders, and-"

"Hold fire," Roland snapped, and exhaled in relief. He silently thanked this Lieutenant Alenko for having one hell of a level head, or at least being very cautious. He must have realized how little either of them wanted to fight and made a snap call to disengage. That realization sent another spike of anger through him.

_The Alliance at least gives a platoon leader the option to make that kind of call. The Lance doesn't._

"They're gonna report this," Gunnar hissed. "And the Alliance will send more men in, and they'll-"

Williams grabbed Gunnar by an armored shoulder and shoved him back.

"You will stow that crap now, Private," she snapped. "Sarge will give you your opinion when he wants it. Now get your rifle and cover your sector."

He glared back at the Corporal through the gleaming eyes of his facemask, but finally turned away. The rocket launcher glowed a bright blue-white for moment as the SDU broke it down and digitally stored it, and he drew the rifle strapped to his back.

"Thank you, Corporal," Roland said as Williams turned back to him. She nodded.

Any further conversation was cut off when they heard the sharp, cutting screech of something shooting down at high speed through the atmosphere. Weapons rose, hunting through the sky above them, and a couple of shouts of "Hyperion drop!" were audible of the roar and scream. The tower shuddered as something punched through the roof overhead, masonry and metal crashing down to the floor further back inside the building.

The the screech-crash sounded again. And again. And three more times.

"Second team, cover the gate. Do not fire unless fired upon!" Roland shouted, and waved the rest of his squad after him as he hurried toward the doors leading inside the building. "First team with me-"

The doors exploded open with a deafening, hollow blast of some kind of breaching charge, and Roland skidded to a halt. He grabbed his Scorpio turret and was hurling it out even as the debris from the door whipped past, clipping off Jenkins' shield and sending Williams stumbling from a hit to the chest.

Over the crash of debris and shouts of his squad, Roland heard a harsh warbling sound, almost like a distorted, static-filled burst of Claptrap dubstep music. A group of lean, almost serpentine figures stepped through the smoke and dust from the explosion, their movements too fluid and precise for organic life. Single blue-white lights were mounted in their serpentine heads, and their long, spindly arms held assault rifles composed of curving, elegant components. Their bodies were lean and narrow, built of a mixture of dull gray-blue metal and exposed black cabling.

Roland's eyes widened, but his training did not give a fuck if he was looking at monsters straight out of the schlockiest of Citadel adventure vids and Migrant Fleet war dramas. He crouched behind his turret's shields, rifle shouldered, and sighted the lead synthetic.

"Geth!" he shouted in warning, but his call was drowned out by the roar of his rifle and the Scorpio's gun. The world around him erupted into hurricane of noise as Lance weapons unleashed the savage, harsh howl of human engineered weaponry, and the strange, hollow _thoopthoopthoop_ of the geth weapons joined in.

Well, at least who was attacking them now. But what the hell were geth doing beyond the Veil, half a galaxy away on an Alliance world?

* * *

Lilith scowled again, tapping her foot as the Claptrap worked furiously to open the door before them. She hadn't seen any Crimson Lance since the group she'd killed after enlisting the robot's aid. She had, however, encountered several security doors, and every door required the robot to take several minutes to bypass.

"Total lack of standardization!" the Claptrap muttered as he jabbed the controls.

"There's no master control code or anything you can use?" Lilith asked.

"You think someone as control-crazy as Handsome Jack would allow peons like us to have access to useful stuff like that?" the robot replied, and began smacking the control console in frustration. "Typical paranoid security contractor work! Every door on this grid has a different security protocol, so I have to work to unlock them individually. I guess it works for keeping out intruders and hobos and insurance salesman and small children, but-"

"Claptrap," Lilith said.

"-maker of oil, Hyperion hates insurance, and company rates are horrible considering how often the workforce gets mangled, and its even worse for us robots-"

"Claptrap," Lilith repeated, annoyed.

"-docking us pay for repairing damage when all our pay is theoretical, and no matter how much I insist that dirty data uploads are not legal tender, it's all they give us, and they even dock _that-"_

"Claptrap!" Lilith shouted.

"-I don't mind multiple terabytes of three-dimension vids of hard, aggressive spark plug installations in chrome-"

Lilith shot him in the back, and he jerked in surprise.

"Claptrap," she repeated, and pointed. "Door's open."

The robot looked to her, then to the door that had he had opened well before he started his rant, and he turned back to her.

"Oh." He stood for a moment, cyclops eye glancing about the hallway. "Well. Let's go that way!"

Lilith shook her head and stepped past him, moving up the hallway beyond. She rounded and corner, and spat out another curse.

"Ooooh! Another locked door!" Claptrap crowed, and scooted past her. He started tapping away at the console.

"If I didn't know any better," the cheerfully spastic robot said, "I'd say they were deliberately trying to slow you down for some dramatic fight scene later on! But that would be silly!"

* * *

Roland emptied his rifle's magazine into the geth charging through the door, and was rewarded by the sight of its shield collapsing with a sound akin to breaking glass. Another burst, this from the Scorpio's gun, tore through the synthetic's torso, and the geth jerked from the impact. White chemicals splattered from the rent cabling and torso plates, but it did not seem to care that it was getting shot to pieces. It brought its weapon up and continued firing, the blue bolts from its weapons cracking against his shield and the Scorpio's barriers. Roland slammed a fresh magazine into his rifle, sighted the synthetic again, and put two more quick bursts into it, blowing gaping holes in the geth's body. The light in its single eye dimmed, and with a sudden squeal of static, it toppled to the floor.

The other geth pressed forward, firing with relentless focus, ignoring their companions as the Lance cut them down one by one. Their shields were powerful; it took upwards of a full magazine to drop one, but the Lancemen had ammunition to spare and definite fire superiority. The geth's emotionless aggression and potent shields weren't enough to save them from the Lance's overwhelming firepower. They were blasted to pieces one by one.

When the last geth hit the floor and the last shell casing rolled away, Roland checked his squad. No injuries, though several had lost their shields.

"Keep moving!" Roland shouted, recovering his Scorpio turret, and he moved toward the blasted door. He reached the door, pressing against the wall, and could hear the rest of the team running up behind him. He drew a grenade from his belt and threw it into the room beyond, and charged in when he heard the crack of its detonation.

The Lance stormed into the chamber beyond, weapons high. Dust and smoke from the explosions and the geth's orbital drop filled the chamber - what might have been a lounge or break room for the base's guards. Dark shapes with single glowing lights darted and slid around the room, and blue bolts strobed back and forth, answered by the sharp howl of Lance weaponry.

Roland sidestepped as he fired, weapon beating on his shoulder and heart pounding. He sighted a geth silhouette and poured rounds into it. The synthetic's shields collapsed almost instantly thanks to the grenade, and it toppled backward with another of those static-filled death cries. He whipped his weapon around, sighting another geth, but it went down to another Lanceman's fire before he could squeeze the trigger.

The battle lasted only a few moments, before silence finally reigned. Geth bodies littered the smoky room, and a quick check of his squad showed that no one was injured. He blinked in surprise at that. The geth were the boogeymen of the Terminus and the borderlands, but these had gone down easily enough. Were these really the hyperadvanced legions of the evil synthetic armies that the Migrant Fleet was warning of?

More screeching howls of descending enemy drop-troops erupted around them, and on Roland's display, he spotted the markers of hostiles appearing all around and well within the compound. The ECHO channels lit up with warnings from Lance troops about the attackers.

"All units, fall back into primary structure!" Higgins suddenly shouted over the company ECHO. "Repeat, withdraw into the primary structure! We've got more hostiles inside the perimeter!"

"Squad, you heard the LT!" Roland shouted, starting across the room, the Lance troops following him. "Both teams, on me! Move, move!"

Gunfire and explosions erupted around the compound, strobing blue lights of geth gunfire rippling from building to building. More flaming streaks speared down from the sky, their howls announcing yet more geth, and his HUD showed the numbers of the enemy expanding rapidly: first a dozen, then two, then fifty. Then more.

Roland understood now, and that understanding sent an icy chill through his gut. The geth's individual infantry were weaker, unit for unit, than Lance troops, but that didn't matter. They were machines. They had the numbers to spare.

* * *

"WUB-WUB-WUBWUBWUB. UN. LOCK DOOR!"

Lilith removed her helmet. It was a necessary risk, as she needed to pinch the bridge of her nose. She could fight the Crimson Lance. She could fight Hyperion. She could deal with invading homicidal alien armies. She was prepared for that, and the Eridian device was worth the risk.

"WUB-WUB-WUBWUBWUB. UP. LOAD CODE! WUB-WUB!"

But she was questioning whether it was worth putting with Claptrap's attempts at dubstep as he worked on the ninth sealed door in their path.

"WUB-WUB-WUBWUB WUB-WUB! DROP!"

* * *

Redeployment orders were flashing across the ECHO at a furious pace. Every one of those orders came from Higgins, which was worrying Roland. He flicked through the company network between contacts with small groups of geth troops, and found that some pretty serious holes had been shot up in the command structure. Most of the company's officers were dead, and half the company's enlisted were down.

His ECHO lit up as the squad descended a flight of stairs into the lower levels of the building. Roland braced himself for another transmission from Higgins, only to see General Knoxx's face pop up in the corner of his HUD. The general didn't speak for a moment, and finally let out a lengthy sigh.

"Okay, Crimson Lance, D Company, this is General Knoxx again," he started. "Listen up. Good news and bad news. Good news is, we know who's attacking the planet. The geth. Of all things, frickin' geth."

Knoxx grunted, and shook his head. The cigar clenched between his teeth waggled a bit as he chewed it.

"And that's the good news. Bad news is, they've zeroed in on the Eridian device you've been sent to recover. Right now we've got multiple division-strength enemy forces inbound, including heavy armor. Lance units are being reprioritized to extract the artifact. All other objectives are flushed. Stop screwing around, and grab the fucking thingabob.

"Also, the board is worried about us being connected to this attack, considering how unexpectedly bloody it's turning out. Per their orders, we're initiating Cleanup Protocol Lambda-Seven. Keep your distance from any Lance personnel who have expired or forgot to hook up their suits' health monitors. 'Cause, you know, they'll be exploding.

"General Knoxx, out."

Roland glanced back at the rest of the squad, and saw Williams shaking her head. They were both familiar with Cleanup Protocol Lambda-Seven. It was used not just to hide Lance presence by incinerating their corpses, it was also used to make sure that Lance troops who were taken prisoner or who missed extraction wouldn't talk to anyone.

"Great, now they're going to overload our power cores when we become inconvenient," she muttered.

"Long as we secure the objective, we should be okay, right?" Jenkins asked, and Reiss nodded.

"We should, if we can keep ahead of that whole damned geth division," he added.

"Okay, enough jawing," Roland cut in. "Move out, or we get left behind."

They reached the bottom of the stairs, and Roland followed the directions on his HUD toward their next marker. The corridor led to an intersection where heavy fighting had raged, and the squad stepped around the blasted remains of geth and a couple of the spindly Hyperion loaders. Roland paused by a dead Hyperion soldier's bullet-riddled corpse and frowned. He saw no signs of Lance presence in this area, beyond his own squad, which bothered him more than a little. If the Lance hadn't taken this section of the lab, why were they being directed through it?

Roland kept checking the rest of the squad, particularly Gunnar, and was relieved to see that Corporal Williams was doing the same. His HUD flashed again, and the objective marker shifted to the main room on this floor, marked as a laboratory. Roland slowed, uncertain as to why his ECHO device was marking this area as their keyed Higgins' channel.

"Sir, this is Roland," he called. "Confirm objective."

"Objective confirmed," Higgins shouted back immediately. Gunfire sounded distantly over his end of the line, both human and geth. "High value information is stored in that lab. I need it secured, all data mined and uploaded, and _all _enemy personnel terminated."

"General Knoxx said-"

"The General is not here, Sergeant," Higgins replied. "I have a clearer understanding of our objectives. Now do your fucking job!"

Roland grit his teeth and nodded.

"Yes sir," he replied, and cut the line. Roland crouched at the intersection, heart pounding as he made sense of what this all meant. There was really only one possibility, so he switched to William's frequency.

"Sarge?"

"Trap," he said.

"Understood." She paused for a moment. "You got a plan?"

"Not yet," he said. "I don't know Higgins' plan yet. But that lab is where he's going to spring it. Keep an eye open and be ready."

* * *

Lilith stepped around the corner, weapon shouldered. The barrel flicked back and forth as she swept the corridor beyond. Her ECHO mapper told her that there were no more of those damned doors in her path, so now her only concern was-

"ONWARD, FOR VENGEANCE!"

-was that boxy moron as he puttered past her on one wheel down the corridor.

_Well, maybe he'll draw some fire,_ she thought, and followed after the Claptrap as he charged blindly on. She couldn't fault him for his erratic courage.

She froze when the echo of a dull detonation sounded down the hallway, and the Claptrap slowed to a halt.

"That sounded an awful lot like a breaching charge blasting apart a door-" the robot mused, "-followed by a squad of amoral mercenaries storming a lab-" A storm of gunfire sounded from down the passage. "-and murdering everyone inside in a hail of bullets! You want to go kick their asses together?"

She glanced at him, raising an eyebrow, and the Claptrap raised its upper arms in a gesture that conveyed the concept of a shrug despite his lack of shoulders.

"Well, I can watch you kick their asses," he admitted, and she nodded.

"Stay behind me," she said, sliding past him. The gunfire ahead cut off, and as she moved closer, Lilith could hear raised voices.

* * *

The lab door blew apart, hurling debris into the chamber beyond, and Jenkins led the way. Bullets deflected off his shield as he stormed through the smoke, his pistol barking, and Roland charged in behind him. His rifle roared out two long, bloody bursts as he spotted movement and muzzle flashes through the dust and smoke and strobing emergency lighting. A Hyperion soldier went down in his sights, blood and armor pieces flying.

The rest of the squad poured in after him, weapons roarings, and in a few seconds the lab went still. The gunfire died away a moment later, and the Lance squad moved across the white-painted room/ Broken glass from lab equipment and scattered papers lay everywhere. Blood splatters marked where Hyperion troops had fallen.

And not just Hyperion soldiers, Roland realized. Several of the bodies were wearing lab coats, pistols or submachineguns lying beside them.

"The scientists were shooting back?" one of the Lance troopers asked.

"Not like it matters," Gunnar grunted in response. The Lance troops began checking the computer terminals around the once-clean room, plugging their ECHO systems into them and downloading data.

Roland glanced around, wary and uncertain. Where was the trap? Was in the data files? Were Gunnar and Higgins going to trap them there trying to download the lab data until it was too late? He glanced to Williams, and was about to speak up when he caught more movement, and he spun, raising his weapon.

"Don't shoot!" a man cried, holding up empty hands. Roland's finger twitched toward the trigger, but he held his fire when he saw the scientist was unarmed.

"Hold fire!" Roland shouted, but Gunnar was already bringing his weapon up toward the Hyperion scientist. A burst of gunfire echoed around the lab, but the shots went wide as Williams slapped Gunner's weapon aside.

"He said hold fire, dammit!" she barked. Gunnar whirled, and even with his face hidden behind his helmet, the anger in his posture was evident.

"Eat hanar and choke," he snapped. "We have-"

"Unarmed civilians, Private," Roland barked with his best "shut-up-new-meat" voice. He gestured to where the Hyperion scientist was crouched, still holding up his hands. Several other men and women, all of them unarmed and wearing white lab coats, were huddled at the far end of the room.

"Like that friggin' matters, Sarge," Gunnar snapped, turning toward Roland. "We have orders, just like at Torfan. Explicit orders to take down anyone in this room. _Anyone."_

"And I'm countermanding those orders," Roland replied. "We are_ not_ shooting civilians. Get that through your skull, _Private_."

Roland's ECHO beeped, and a brief burst of static washed through his earpiece. He recognized that, and a chill ran down his spine as he realized it was an indicator of a company-wide override code being piped into his system. And then he understood precisely what the trap was.

"Sergeant Roland," Higgins' voice sounded. "Please don't tell me you're seriously considering disobeying a direct order."

"Lieutenant," Roland said, and he silently cursed. "There are noncombatants-"

"Kill them, Sergeant," Higgins said. There was a conversational lightness to his tone, as if he were ordering a steak and beer.

"Sir-"

"Take your gun," Higgins ordered, "Put it to those civilians' heads, and blow their brains out. Now." He paused. "Or face immediate execution for disobeying a superior."

Roland grit his teeth. He had expected something more subtle, not such a blunt and obvious trap. But the Lance had killed noncombatants before. He should have seen this coming.

"You want me dead that badly?" Roland muttered.

"I want you to recognize the realities of your employment with the Crimson Lance, Sergeant.," Higgins replied. "We can't have liabilities like you running around, getting in the way of proper procedure and operations. 'War crimes' this, and 'morality' that, and 'mass executions' and whatever. Cuts into the proper profit margin out on the borderlands."

Higgins paused, muttering something on the other end to someone.

"I'm surprised really, Roland," he added. "You were such a good little attack dog at Torfan, but things changed over the years since then, didn't they?" He shook his head. "Anyway, Roland, make your call. We've got fifteen minutes until extraction, which would give you just enough time to download that data and shoot those civilians and then hustle on down here. So, accept your place in the Lance, or get your brains blown out."

"You son-of-a-bitch," he growled. "You can't make me kill civilians! I've got an entire squad backing me-"

Gunnar brought his rifle up and pointed it at Roland's head. In the same moment, Williams snapped her weapon up at Gunnaer, only to have another Lanceman put a gun against her head. Jenkins brought his pistol up, only to be covered by two more mercenaries. Reiss was raising his weapon, but stopped as the last two Lancemen trained their guns on him.

"-up."

"I'm sorry, what was that Roland?" Higgins said, his voice painfully cheerful. "I couldn't hear you over all the guns being pointed at you. But I'm not going to waste anymore time. Got this priceless Eridian artifact to secure and pack up. Make your choice, Sergeant. Toodles!"

Roland glared at Gunnar as the line went dead._Curse you, and your inevitable betrayal,_ he thought, and the Lanceman shrugged.

"Sorry, Sarge," he said, and then shook his head. "Wait, no, I'm _not_. Not sorry to put a holier-than-thou hypocritical prick like you in his place." He chuckled. "Been waiting for months for this chance. Kept telling Higgins I was just going to frag your bunk, but he was all "Noooooo, I've got a _plan_ to deal with Roland, blah-blah-blah.' And I was all "Just shoot the skaglick in the head, or he'll do something stupid like report to the Alliance about all those mass graves and crap,' but then he was 'No, no, we have to do this the right way, give Roland a chance to come back to the Lance properly,' and all that crap."

Gunnar paused, and glanced around the lab, which had gone totally silent during his rant. He finally cleared his throat.

"So, you gonna shoot those civilians or not?" he asked. "I mean, I know you can. How many did you kill on Torfan to get the job done? But I can totally understand if you don't want to. And if you don't, I'd be all for it. I mean, I really want to shoot you in the face, Sarge. So just go ahead and _not_ kill those civilians. Be noble and all that crap. For the greater good, Sarge, and the greater 'Gunnar gets to shoot you in the face' too."

Roland looked to Williams, standing tense, ready to fire. She gave a very slight nod as his helmet turned toward her. Reiss crouched, rifle held tight, waiting for the moment to move. Jenkins stood, shaking just slightly, but kept his weapon trained on the Lanceman holding a gun to Williams's helmet.

He then looked over his shoulder at the huddling group of scientists. One of them was weeping, and the man who had raised his hands crouched between the Lancemen and the others.

"Gunnar," Roland said, turning back toward the treacherous Private. "I think I might oblige you."

He grasped his Scorpio turret, and Gunnar tensed in gleeful anticipation.

Then a hollow roar sounded outside the room. Gun barrels dipped slightly in confusion.

And Roland's Scorpio slapped Gunnar in the faceplate during the momentary distraction.

The Sergeant hurled himself forward, bringing his rifle up right as the storm of gunfire erupted on all sides. Roland caught flashes of movement and snapshots of violence as he leapt toward Gunnar: Reiss, firing his weapon point-blank into a Lancemen as he shoulder-checked another. Williams, dropping to her knees and firing her weapon into Gunnar's flank, the rounds shattering against his shields. Jenkins jamming his pistol into the back of the man covering Williams and firing. The two Lancemen covering Jenkins pouring bullets into him, punching through his kinetic barriers and heavy shield and armor, but he stood tall and unflinching as he gunned down the man threatening Williams.

Roland fired into Gunnar's chest and head as he dove toward the Private, and saw the man's shields collapse a heartbeat before they impacted with a mighty crash of ceramic armor. They rolled across the floor, dropping their rifles, punching and shouting and kicking, and Gunnar managed to kick Roland in the sternum with one heavy boot and shove him off. The Sergeant fell off of Gunnar, who started to draw his pistol, up until Williams drilled six rounds through his helmet and blasted it to a splattered mess.

Roland snatched up his weapon and spun to his feet, bringing the rifle up. He caught a glimpse of Reiss beating one of the Lancemen senseless with his rifle butt, while the other lay in a bloody heap. Jenkins collapsed to the floor beside Roland, blood pouring from a dozen holes in his chestplate. The two mercenaries who killed him leveled their guns at Roland as he stood and opened fire. His shields flared and drained as a dozen rounds hit him in the span of a second.

Then the two Lancemen were covered in a river of cascading lightning, and before they could do anything more than arch in agony and start screaming, an explosion of lightning and force erupted behind them. An armored figure burst from a gap in space-time, and the blast sent both Lancemen and their respective body parts flying away in a shower of cooked meat and metal.

The lab was silent, save for the crunching of Reiss finishing off the Lance trooper he was fighting. Roland looked up at the armored figure. He didn't need to ask who she was; between the contours of the black hardsuit she wore and the golden eyes gleaming behind the nearly opaque visor, he knew that she was the same Siren who had torn his fellow Lancemen apart.

_Excellent. I wonder what else can go wrong today._

* * *

Above Eden Prime, the battle had halted, at least temporarily, The battered remnants of the Alliance fleet had retreated to the far side of the planet, and the geth armada was content to leave them be. As they counted their dead, patched up their wounded hulls, vented built-up heat, and prepared for the next round of battle, the geth took up positions over the major cities of the planet, where fighting still raged on the ground.

The human fleet kept an eye on the enemy fleet with drones and satellite feed despite being blocked from direct line of sight by the curvature of the planet. It was through these eyes that they caught the sudden burst of high-frequency radiation that heralded another ship's transition into the system. For a moment, the Alliance commanders thought that a new geth fleet had arrived, based on the mass and the amount of radiation the arrival gave off, but the shape resolved itself into nothing they had seen before.

Visual scanning showed a massive shape, several kilometers longer than even the largest Torgue-Urdnot dreadnought to date. It was crafted of a dark, black-purple metal,with blood-red lightning running up and down the vessel's length, and a quartet of massive, metallic tentacle-like appendages extending from its bow, stretching toward the planet as though it wished to crush Eden Prime in its and thermal sensors picked up a tremendous array of emissions from the ship, indicating power output beyond anything remotely possible by the Alliance, Citadel, or any corporation. Element zero scanners picked up a tremendously powerful mass effect drive deep within the ship.

But the most striking aspect of the massive ship were the crimson lines running down the port side of the vessel. They described complex designs with sharp angles, circular shapes, and wavy script. Some of the lines were hair-thin, barely visible even with precision thermal imaging, while others were a dozen meters across.

The crimson designs on the ship's flank lit up, shifting from deep crimson to bright red then searing gold.

Reality twisted and broke around the ship, a torrent of heat and lightning and radiation rolling off its hull as it stepped out of this dimension, and Phasewalked toward the planet's surface.

* * *

_**Codex - Technology - Digistruct Technology**_

_Digistruct technology allows for the quick and efficient storage of items on one's person by breaking the object down to a "digital" level and storing it in a specially-designed "storage deck unit". Based on reverse-engineered Eridian technology, digistruct devices collapse the object in question into an extremely small space, and will reassemble the object at the user's command, allowing for the storage of large amounts of ammunition, multiple weapons or pieces of personal equipment, and so on._

_Digistruct technology is energy-intensive, with the object being collapsed demanding more energy as its mass increases. A device used to contain small arms is portable by a humanoid, while a device large enough to assemble or store a vehicle is the size of a small house. Storing aircraft, spacecraft, or entire buildings is extremely energy intensive and rarely worth the expense. Additionally, devices using element zero cannot be stored in digistruct devices; all attempts to collapse devices with element zero have resulted in violent detonations and/or fire. For this reason, firearms and other personal equipment are separated into "eezo" or "digistruct" classifications._

_Digistruct technology is commonplace among primary militaries, corporate mercenary forces, and the wealthier civilian portions of Alliance, Citadel, and Terminus space. Digistruct is more sporadic among border worlds and colony worlds, and while digistruct's inability to contain element zero-based technology limits its utility, its primarily use for more "rugged" and "primitive" technologies makes it very useful in the borderlands._

* * *

_**Author's Notes:**_ This chapter took me a while because I kept having trouble writing Claptrap properly. I think I eventually managed to get a handle on his annoying-yet-amusingly-annoying nature.

Also, yes. Reaper Sirens. Or Reaper...somethings. Heh. Heh-heh-heh. But not as terrifying as Donnel Udina, **DIRECTOR OF FUTURE S.H.I.E.L.D.**

Until next chapter . . . .


	3. Chapter 3: Ballistic Diplomacy

_**Author's** **Notes:**_ When you get to the phrase "hurricane of bullets," that would be a great time to find a Borderlands 2 OST and start playing the battle music when you're fight Hyperion on the Bloodshot Ramparts. Just a suggestion.

* * *

"Alright, how's it going? How are our assets?"

"Roughly half the security force is dead, sir. I've lost twenty-one of eighty-three data feeds. Hostile geth programs are scattered throughout the network."

"What about the intruders?"

"One hundred and three Crimson Lance troops are still alive, but they are outnumbered three to one by the geth, and more geth are entering the compound. The rogue Lance unit and the Siren have encountered one another, and a peaceful outcome is likely. The Claptrap with them is still intact. We also have a Systems Alliance Marine unit scaling the outer wall and entering the perimeter."

"Good, good." Slender fingers rubbed a smooth, chiseled chin, which was attached to a tremendously handsome face and eyes that had long since lost any beauty to them. "What about orbit?"

"An unusual contact appeared on orbital sensors a few moments ago, but it disappeared just as quickly. Displaying it now."

Mismatched eyes narrowed, and his heart started pounding as he leaned in closer.

"Oh. Oh yes." He grinned, and clapped his hands once.

"Okay, send out these orders," he said, his voice perfectly pitched to catch the attention of an entire boardroom of shareholders or order a mass execution. He sometimes did both at the same time.

"Security is to regroup in the upper levels around the main hangar. They're to engage anyone not wearing a Hyperion uniform on-sight. And disarm all locks on our shuttles, too, while you're at it."

"Sent. And done."

"Kickass. Now." He sat down, and began pouring a drink. "Let's watch the show."

* * *

_**Chapter Three: Ballistic Diplomacy**_

* * *

Roland scrambled to his feet, and stepped toward the Siren. He met her eyes, the golden glow fading, and nodded his thanks.

Then he tackled her.

Behind him, he could hear Williams and Reiss jumping out of the way as well, and a blast of sudden heat and force erupted behind them, and then repeated half a dozen more times. Roland and the Siren tumbled over the floor, and he found the barrel of her pistol pressed against his helmet when they came to a halt.

He went very still, releasing her from his arms and holding them out. The pistol - a Maliwan shock-elemental repeater with a barrel the diameter of his thumb - remained jammed againt his skull. After a couple of seconds she lifted the pistol and clambered off of him, before extending her hand.

"Thanks," she offered, her tone a bit amused. That put him off somehow, but he accepted the Siren's hand. "Didn't know your former friends there were rigged to explode."

"Not my choice," he replied as he got back to his feet. He glanced at the remains of the Lancemen who had been under Higgins' command, as well as Jenkins, their bodies charred into unrecognizable hunks of meat and metal. A pang of sadness shot through him at that, along with a burst of pride.

_Damn. He was a good kid. Didn't deserve this, but he went down like a man._

"And thanks," he offered a moment later. "For helping when you did."

"If I hadn't heard you arguing with that psycho about the civilians," she replied, "you'd have different words to say." She glanced to the rest of the squad. "Sorry about your friend. I was hoping-"

"Without you, none of us would have survived," Roland replied with a shake of his head. He checked everyone's vitals on his HUD. Reiss and Williams were uninjured, but he still asked them anyway.

"I'd feel a hell of a lot better if we ditch these power cores, Sarge," Williams said. "Higgins might decide to try detonating them."

"Good point," he said, and began releasing the straps around the heavy torso armor. "Chuck the vests, but keep the shields. They won't be as strong without the suit cores, but they'll be better than nothing."

"Right," Reiss said as he and Williams followed suit. "Lance tried to kill us once. No reason to give 'em another chance."

"So, I take it you guys are deserting now?" the Siren asked, leaning against a scorched tabletop. She glanced to the scientists, who were still huddled in their corner, watching them with equal parts fear and hope.

"Yes," Roland grunted. "We're already marked now, so there's no sense in trying to stick around."

"You got a plan for getting out of here?" she asked as they finished ditching their torso armor and the deadly power cores within. They detached the lightweight shield generators mounted inside the armor - really just the same generators many people carried clipped to their belts or arms - and attached them to their belts. "Because there's about a million geth coming down around the base, and we know exactly what they want."

"One moment," Roland said, and they each hurled their core-loaded vests across the room. They landed in the far corner, and a few seconds later exploded into brilliant incendiary bursts. The trio of Lance troops were now clad in just their red ballistic weave jumpsuits and helmets.

"Higgins has the beacon," Reiss said as the howl of the detonations faded. "And he said extraction was on the way."

"Right," Williams added. "We find that snake, we find a way out."

"Better than fighting through thousands of geth," Roland said. He frowned, thinking, and came to a realization. "And that beacon is still worth a lot of money."

"Good idea," Williams said, and an eager edge came to her voice. "They tried to kill us. Best way to pay them back is steal the thing they came here to snatch in the first place."

"The three of you against a hundred Lance troops and legions of geth, plus whatever Hyperion security is left?" They looked up to the Siren, who watched them with cool, gold-tinted eyes. "Sounds like suicide."

"Good thing that we've got something in common then," Roland said, and the Siren nodded. He held out a hand, and after staring at it for a moment she gingerly shook it. "Roland." He gestured to the others. "Williams. Reiss."

"Lilith," she replied. "No ranks anymore?"

"No," Roland grunted.

"Still calling you Sarge, Sarge," Reiss said, and Roland nodded. He stepped past Lilith, moving toward the scientists.

"You," Roland said pointing toward the man who had the guts to stand between his fellows and the men planning to kill him. "What's your name?"

"Greer," the man replied. There was only a slight quaver to the man's voice. "Doctor Greer."

"Doctor, is there another secure lab or storage area around here? Somewhere out of the way?" Roland asked. The scientist nodded. "Get these people there, and lock it down. The geth in this compound are only after the Eridian device. If you try to escape, they'll probably kill you, but you have a better chance of survival if you stay out of their way. Do you understand?"

He nodded quickly, and Roland patted the man on the shoulder.

"Get them moving," he ordered, and rose. He strode back toward his squad and the Siren. They regarded him with expectant eyes, even behind their visors.

"Let's move out and grab that beacon," he ordered. "And pay back thos eassholes who tried to kill us for doing the right damned thing."

"HELL YES!" a mechanical voice howled from the entrance to the lab. Lilith muttered something in annoyance. "Vengeance on the organic bastards that massacred my lot number!"

"What the hell is that?" Reiss asked.

"_Annoying_," Lilith grunted. "That's, well, I think its the only Claptrap unit left in the base. He's been unlocking the doors in exchange for watching me kill your former comrades."

"Sounds useful," Reiss said.

"Until he starts on the dubstep," Lilith muttered.

"Okay, we've wasted enough time," Roland cut them off with his best authoritative bark. "We've only got ten minutes before extraction arrives and Higgins makes off with our way out of here _and _that beacon. Let's move!"

They still had the data plots from company network. Higgins hadn't yet cut them out of those, if he was even aware that they were still alive. Using that data, Roland could easily determine where the Eridian beacon had been stored and where the rest of the company were positioned and, more importantly, where they were headed. The route he plotted to intercept Higgins' men led them through the twisting corridors of the Hyperion base and back upstairs. Lilith took the lead, advancing eagerly, while the Claptrap puttered along behind them on his single wheel. They cut through an exterior loading dock that was clear at the moment but showed signs of heavy fighting between geth, Lance, and Hyperion troops. The sky above was still streaked with smoke and the back-and-forth fire of mass accelerators, elemental weaponry, and fighter craft.

As they neared the far end of the dock, though, Lilith slowed. Roland ran past her, and then paused, glancing back at the Siren. She had come to a halt, and was staring up at the sky.

"What is it?" he asked, and she shook her head.

"I feel . . . I don't kn-"

Reality twisted overhead, and a sonic shockwave broke upon them, knocking them all off their feet (save Claptrap, due the lack thereof) and shaking the entire complex. Blood-colored lightning swirled around a massive, towering shape that ripped through the air above them, all dark metal and long, grasping tendrils and aquatic lines. One side of the massive machine was covered in golden, complex whorls and script, similar in style to those of the old Eridian ruins, but with a harsher, aggressive edge to them.

A corona of dark energy, just like the one that had wreathed Lilith as she Phasewalked, danced around the ship for a moment before vanishing. The titanic machine slowly descended toward the surface below, mechanical tentacles reaching out toward the ground to brace it as it started to land. A heavy silence fell over the small group, broken by a tinny, awe-stricken voice.

"Sweet mother of chrome and all her polished nephews," the Claptrap whispered.

"Is that-" Williams breathed.

"Phasewalking," Lilith gasped. "A ship. I don't know how a ship can-"

"Not relevant now," Roland ordered, pushing up to his feet. The others leapt up at the tone of his voice. "Keep moving!"

They were on their feet and wheels in moments and hurrying out from under the specter of the massive, Phasewalking dreadnought.

* * *

Kaidan hurried across the courtyard into the main building of the Hyperion compound, his Marines following. They had engaged a few groups of geth on rear-guard duty after scaling the walls, but most of the synthetics were now either inside the compound's buildings or outside the compound itself and closing quickly. Sandwiched between two armies, Kaidan's group was left in an uneasy state of quiet.

They passed dozens of corpses: geth, Hyperion soldiers and robots, and the charred remains of a few unidentified troops. He couldn't determine who they were, but most corporations had their commandos outfitted with self-destruct units which incinerated the bodies. He thought one of the wrecked gunships resembled a model commonly used by the Crimson Lance, but whatever had taken it out wasn't a conventional weapon. It looked more like someone had struck it with a giant incendiary battering ram that had crumpled the cockpit.

"Still no positive identification on the attackers, sir," he reported back to Captain Anderson in the _London._ "Just some intense fighting. Lot of it concentrated around the main labs where the artifact is stored."

"Understood, Lieutenant," Anderson reported. "Just locate the device and recover it if you can. If not . . . if not, your orders are to destroy it."

Kaidan came to a halt, blinking at that last order. That wasn't part of the briefing.

"Confirm that last, sir?"

"This comes direct from the top. The last thing we need is a rogue corporation or the geth getting that device," Anderson said. There was a pause on his end. "And Command has informed me that we don't want Handsome Jack to get any more Eridium technology than he's already claimed. If it comes down to destroying that thing or letting the enemy take it, destroy it, son."

"Understood, sir," Kaidan replied, with a firm nod.

The Marines reached the entrance to the main lab building and were preparing to enter when a mountain of metal tore its way into reality directly overhead, the shockwave knocking them off their feet.

Kaidan was back on his feet in moments, peering up at the tremendous, dark shape wreathed in red lightning and golden markings. Like most, he knew what Eridian script resembled, and could make the (bowel-watering) connection between the markings and the fact that it was running down the ship's left flank.

"Captain, you getting this?" he called over the rumble of the massive vessel as it descended, arms reaching toward the planet's surface as though it planned to scoop up the entire lab complex.

"I see it," Anderson replied, his voice tight. "That thing just Phasewalked straight down from orbit."

"Eridian, sir?" Kaidan asked.

"I don't know, and right now, that's irrelevant," Anderson barked. "You have your orders, now move!"

"Aye-aye, sir," Kaidan replied, and waved for the Marines with him to rush inside. "Can we get some support?"

"All air and ground assets are tied up just fighting the geth, Lieutenant," Anderson said. "The Fleet is still staunching the bleeding from the first engagement. Hate to say it, son, but you're on your own."

_As usual_, Kaidan thought. But he only barked an acknowledgement, and then took the lead into the building, just as the massive warship touched down, sending floor-shaking tremors through the compound.

* * *

Roland held up a fist at the intersection, and everyone came to a halt and went quiet. Even the Claptrap recognized the need to be silent, coming to a puttering halt a safe distance down the hallway. Roland peeked around the corner, wishing he had a drone or fiber optic wire or even a damned mirror.

It was another lab, but unlike the previous one, this was a wide open room, with a circular line of computer terminals that glowed dimly with the idle holograms of a haptic interface. Interspersed among the computers were large, boxy devices with cylindrical components that were almost certainly scanning equipment. A large pedestal of polished stone sat in the center, currently empty, but it was surrounded by gray slabs of geometrically-precise rock, carved into smooth, glassy blocks. The slabs possessed thin, flowing lines that glowed in the emergency lighting, shifting from dark blue to purple to red and green and then back.

"Main lab, looks like," he whispered, and waved a hand forward once he was sure it was clear. Williams and Lilith slid past him into the room with weapons raised. The Siren didn't move with the same precision as Williams, but she was still quick and covered her side of the room with ease. That, and the way she'd been chewing up the rest of the company earlier, told him she wasn't just dependant on her alien-gifted cosmic powers. The two women took up firing positions, and the rest of the group moved up behind them.

"Yeah, this was where the leaks said they were keeping it," Lilith said once they swept the lab. She looked over one of the computer terminals, where Claptrap was tapping some of the controls.

"Didn't even bother locking them down," the robot muttered. "Password is still set to 'Guest'! Exactly like I suggested it! That was, maybe, sixty-percent sarcasm! No information security at all."

"No signs of fighting here, either," Reiss called from the far end of the room. "Like they just up and abandoned the place to the Lance."

"They were fighting like bastards to keep us out," Roland mused. "Why would they abandon the heart of their research here?"

"Won't find out staring at an empty pedestal," Lilith said. "You're still locked in on their network, right?"

"Yeah, they're converging on one of the hangar bays, at the top of the main building," Roland said, checking his ECHO. "Move out!"

They started out of the far end of the lab, down another of the Hyperion base's endless array of corridors. Distant gunfire sounded overhead, a mixture of human and geth. As they followed the path dictated by the Lance's ECHO network, Roland caught another transmission, this one on the company-wide net.

"Attention, all personnel of Crimson Lance D Company, this is acting Company Commander Higgins," the bastard himself called, his portrait appearing on Roland's HUD. "We have confirmed that Third Squad of First Platoon has betrayed the rest of the company to the enemy. All loyal squadmembers have been brutally executed, and likely, I dunno, dismembered and teabagged. We've triggered their power cores, but have no confirmation that they have been killed, so if you see them, correct this bureaucratic oversight with terminal lethality."

The transmission ended, and Roland nodded with grim determination.

"They'll be gunning for us now," he said, looking to the rest of his squad. "So if we see any Lance between us and the objective, shoot to-"

"Okay, look, sorry," Higgins cut in again. "I think, maybe, _four_ of you knew what I meant by 'terminal lethality.' It means _shoot them_. A whole bunch. Ass, face, I don't care. Shoot them, until they die from it. 'Kay, guys? And, seriously, basic language education. Try it. It will _dramatically _improve your career prospects. If you ever had a career prospect beyond shooting people for the Lance. Because, y'know, leaving the Lance is death."

The transmission cut out again.

"Right," Roland said. "Kill them before they-"

"Oh, son of an ass, are you serious?" Higgins shouted over the network. "How is he-? Well, cut him - Gah! Okay, so, Roland, hey buddy, you squad-murdering shitstain, you can probably hear me right now because the only guy who knows how to cut you out of the company ECHO network was Barry, and Barry just up and got his head ventilated by geth." Higgins chuckled. "Crazy, crazy Barry. So, since you can hear me, I guess you know we're going to kill you. I just wanted to make sure you were aware of that. And also, I'm going to shoot you in the balls when this is over. Just, well, FYI. Go die in a fire, buddy!"

The line went dead again.

"Sir, when we kill him," Williams said, "Let me shoot him. Please?"

"I'll consider it," Roland growled. "Let's get to it, people."

* * *

Bullets stitched the wall just over Kaidan's head, and a couple sparked off his shields. He ducked back behind cover, muttering, and waved the rest of the squad back. The balcony walkway they were using overlooked most of the compound, and according to his suit's scanners, it was one of the quickest ways to get to the main launch bay where all the geth and other contacts inside the compound were converging.

It was also occupied by a couple of Hyperion soldiers, clad in their heavy yellow-painted armor, and they weren't too discriminating in their targets.

"Hold your fire!" Kaidan shouted over the guards' gunfire. "Systems Alliance Marines! We're on the same side!"

The guards either didn't hear, didn't care, or had orders to not care. A few more rounds hit the wall, and Kaidan repeated the order to hold fire. He shook his head and, remembering Anderson's orders had included keeping the artifact out of Hyperion hands, he made the call. A clench of his fist set dark energy twisting around him, and his body was sheathed in a powerful biotic field several times stronger than his suit's own barriers. He stepped out of cover and charged straight into the Hyperion troops' fire, his Marines following behind him.

Kaidan's submachinegun chattered and his squad's rifles thundered around him, a steady stream of bullets pounding into the Hyperion troops' shields and armor. The corporate troops didn't give any ground, their weapons howling with a fury that didn't abate until the first guard went down in a cloud of spraying blood and shattered armor. The second one was struck repeatedly in the chest by Marine fire that cracked his armor, forcing him back with every step until a biotic thrust by the Lieutenant hurled him off the balcony.

"Captain," Kaidan reported as they moved along the walkway a few moments later when their shields had recharged. "We've been engaged by Hyperion security."

"Friendly fire?" Anderson asked, and Kaidan shook his head.

"Didn't feel very friendly to me," he muttered. "I think they know we're here to steal their toys."

"All you can do is keep pushing forward, Alenko," Anderson said. "I'll see if Command can pry some answers out of Hyperion."

"Understood, sir."

* * *

There was a cargo elevator running from the main lab level to the hangar where the remaining Lance were assembling. There were a _lot_ of them; Roland guessed that just about everyone in the company who had survived fighting Hyperion, the geth, and Lilith were outside, going by the sheer amount of gunfire they could hear as the elevator reached that floor. The group had their weapons up and ready when the elevator doors opened, and they stepped into what could best be described a hurricane of bullets.

The hangar was a large docking facility, with a lower maintenance floor strewn with equipment and disassembled - and now bullet-riddled - cargo and ore loading craft. A second floor held a couple of docking cradles for ships, and a Hyperion interstellar shuttle was docked at one of them via magnetic clamps affixed to its hull. Beyond that, it was difficult to make out anything in the brutal storm of noise and multicolored tracer fire flying in every direction as three factions tried their damndest to kill each other. Higgins' Lance troops - about sixty men in total - were spread around the large hangar bay in groups of four to eight soldiers, and not by choice. They were trading rivers of bullets with about the same number in geth infantry. At the far end of the hangar, about thirty Hyperion soldiers and combat loaders were hunkered down and trading fire with both sides.

What the Hyperion troops lacked in numbers they made up for in cohesion, and what the Lance lacked in cohesion they made up for in firepower. Geth troops kept pouring into the room as the Lance and Hyperion cut them down, some from other doorways into the hangar, and some dropping in through the open hangar doors amid blue kinetic barriers and screaming howls of retro-thrusters. The Lance troops were moving by bounds toward the stairs leading to the second level, and the Hyperion troops tried to doggedly pursue them in spite of being outnumbered four to one.

No one had spotted the new arrivals, which gave them a moment the process the sheer chaos of the gun battle as more than a hundred and fifty men and machines engaged in ballistic diplomacy.

"There!" Roland said, pointing up at the docking level, at the cradle opposite the docked shuttle. A knot of Lance troops, two of them wearing heavy black armor and backpack power generators, were surrounding a device that resembled a tall, thin spire wreathed in green light, around which several shards of glowing stone circled. Both spire and stones were covered in that glowing, color-shifting Eridian script. Higgins, visible by the fact that he was missing his helmet (as all proper commanders were wont to do) was barking orders and directing his men.

"That's our payback," Williams muttered.

"And our payday," Lilith added with a grin, and dashed out of the elevator.

"Wait!" Roland started, but she spun around toward them, her eyes glowing suddenly through her visor.

"I'll cover you!" she shouted, and dashed toward several geth. The synthetics whirled toward her as one, their curving rifles brought to bear, only for her to punch a hole in reality with a burst of electricity of and kinetic force, and reappear a moment later in the middle of the group of geth, punching one so hard it blew into several pieces and sending the rest flying away.

"You heard the crazy Siren!" Roland shouted.

"FOR VENGEANCE!" Claptrap screamed before Roland could continue, and charged out of the elevator. Shaking his head, Roland took the lead, throwing out his Scorpio turret and raising his rifle. Williams and Reiss followed, and they joined the insanity.

* * *

"One hell of a firefight up ahead!" shouted one of the Marines as Kaidan's squad hurried along the outer walkway. The Lieutenant nodded. They were maybe thirty meters away, running up a flight of stairs that would give them outside access to the hangar in question, and from here they could hear the storm of bullets, a composite howl of harsh human-made weaponry and the geth's _thoopthoop_ pulse weapons. Enough stray tracers and blue mass accelerator rounds were screaming out of the hangar bay ahead that he guessed more than a hundred combatants were desperately trying to kill each other.

The titanic dreadnought towering over them had not reacted to the gun battle, instead positioning itself directly over the facility. Every minute or so the Alliance troops had spotted at sleek, locust-like ship about twenty meters long swoop overhead and pause above the hangar doors, where it would drop about fifteen geth infantry platforms into the bay before peeling out.

At this rate, the geth would bury everyone else under sheer numbers. They had to move quickly. Kaidan moved to the point position as they reached the top of the stairs. The walkway straightened out, and fifteen meters ahead they could see the hangar. The walkway was nearly flush with the wall of the level the hangar was built into, so all they could see was stray tracer fire whipping out of the bay ahead of them and the open doors.

"Keep close and cover your angles!" he ordered his troops, and they nodded despite the redundant orders. They hefted their weapons as they charged along the walkway.

"LT!" one of the Marines shouted as they neared the doors, and pointed. Kaidan followed the Marine's finger, and spotted a fat-bellied transport ship painted in red and gray colors swooping in. It was a human design, and though it lacked markings, he could guess at the owners.

_Crimson Lance. Atlas Corporation, then. Greedy bastards want to maintain their monopoly on Eridian tech?_

They reached the edge of the hangar doors, and Kaidan pressed himself against the wall. They were about to plunge into the maelstrom; he could hear screams, mechanical stutters, and some form of odd, hollow explosion every few moments. Certain death awaited them, but they had their orders.

A flare of red lit set his visor opaque for a moment, and then it faded and the visor returned to normal. Kaidan looked up to see the Lance transport ship was now little more than flaming scrap, the remains impaled on a red beam emerging from the prow of the titan looming overhead.

"Yeah, that's . . . not good at all," Kaidan muttered under his breath. But whatever that dreadnought was, it had bought them at least few more minutes by taking out the Lance ship.

"Ready, Marines!" he shouted. He received shouts back in the affirmative. Kaidan drew up a biotic barrier around himself, and when sheathed in the powerful, comfortable blue glow, he bellowed, "Advance!"

He rounded the corner, submachinegun shouldered, and the Systems Alliance Marines joined the madness.

* * *

Roland rose from cover, sighting a group of geth and pouring fire into them. Their shields flared and broke under his concentrated fire. His own shields flashed as they deflected stray shots, and he dropped to cover as the geth pivoted toward him, tracing the source of the fire that broke their defenses. Reiss perforated them as Roland pulled their ire, and they toppled in mangled piles of cabling and armor plating.

A trio of Lancemen charged around their flank, trading fire with Williams. She jerked back, blood flying from her flank as a round punched through her shield. The mercenaries pushed forward with vicious, relentless intent, until Lilith exploded her way back into reality among them, rending them with waves of lightning and hurling was was left across the bay. Williams clutched her side, omnitool flashing as she started applying Insta-Health and nodded the Siren her thanks. Roland slid in beside the wounded soldier, redeploying his Scorpio turret to cover them both.

"Swift death to the robot abusing pig-****ers! And then, we shall slay those who programmed the autocensor into my voice module!"

Claptrap provided emotional support.

They kept moving toward one of the ramps leading to the upper level, separated by a wall that would cover anyone moving up. Hyperion troops fired in their general direction, but had too many targets to focus on just their small group, while the geth paid them no more heed than any other threat. But the Lance were another matter. Higgins had spotted them, and the Lance troops who weren't pinned down fighting the geth and Hyperion were actively trying to kill them.

But the three ex-Lance and the Siren fighting alongside them didn't die easily. Anyone directly threatening them found themselves facing immediate, decisive, concentrated gunfire, and if that wasn't enough to break them, Lilith charged into the midst of the enemy, shocking and blasting and burning them down.

As they advanced, bullet casings raining from digistruct weapons and mass accelerators overheating from massed fire, Roland spotted something else: another group of figures advancing across the hangar, fighting in tight coordination much like their own squad. But where Roland's group had a Siren supporting them, this group was led by a man slinging blue-tinged bolts of gravity-altering power that launched foes across the bay or yanked them off their feet, when he wasn't wreathed in a shimmering blue field that deflected incoming fire with effortless ease. And Roland recognized the squad's equipment.

He brought up the same frequency he'd used less than an hour ago: general Systems Alliance military communications, and tightbeamed a transmission toward the SA Marines.

"Lieutenant Alenko!" he shouted.

The biotic Marine actually jerked to a halt. Well, that ID'd the squad leader with the level head. Roland keyed his transmitter to show his face.

"Who is this?" the familiar Marine officer's voice responded, his portrait appearing in Roland's HUD.

"Name's Roland. Sergeant, ex-Crimson Lance," he replied, and then fired a couple of bursts at a geth platform that was a bit too optimistic. It went down hard. "Propose we have a mutual enemy."

"That being?" Alenko called as he launched a Lance trooper across the hangar.

"Everyone one of these assholes!" Roland shouted back, cutting down a Hyperion loader advancing toward them.

"Agreed," Alenko answered. The last syllable was drowned out by Lilith erupting back into reality near the ramp to the second floor, scattering a group of Lancemen holding that spot.

"Ramp secure!" she called. "Get moving or get left behind!"

Roland, Reiss, and Williams rose, laying down suppressing fire as they advanced toward the ramp, Claptrap squealing along behind them and shouting curses at anything that suited his fancy.

"The Siren with you?" Alenko called as his Marines moved toward them.

"Hell yes," Roland replied. "So's the Claptrap."

"Ah. I . . . see. Okay. We're moving toward the ramp! Can you cover us?"

"Feed me your IFF," Roland shouted, readying his Scorpio turret as it finished reloading and recharging. Williams and Reiss were firing on either side of him, shouting targets. Lilith had already moved away from the ramp and was blasting back into . . . wherever she went when Phasewalking. "My Scorpio will cover you!"

"Sending!" Roland fired a couple of bursts and checked his HUD. A positive signal was received. Two seconds later, the Scorpio confirmed it had the new friendlies locked in. He deployed the gun turret.

"Move up! We've got you!" he shouted, and the Marines rose as a group and advanced, firing and maneuvering toward the ramp under the supporting fire of three angry Lancemen backed by a heavy gun turret and a rampaging Siren.

Within less than a minute, the Marines had reached their position, sheltered by the ramp's wall. Roland and Alenko traded nods. That was all they really had time for.

"You here for the beacon?" Roland asked, having to shout over the metal typhoon being whipped about outside. Alenko nodded. "Right. We got a mutual target, but bhe Lance has a ship coming in," Roland started, but Alenko shook his head.

"That thing outside shot it down," he reported. "Might do the same to us if we extract the device."

"We can decide on that risk when we recover the damn thing!" Roland said, and Kaidan nodded.

"That Hyperion shuttle operational?" the Lieutenant asked.

"Looks like, but I don't have anyone who can fly it," Roland replied.

"I can!" Claptrap piped up, hopping up and down somehow on his single wheel. "It's Hyperion tech! I can interface with Hyperion tech without any problem!"

"Uhhh," Roland started, but Alenko cut him off.

"Best we've got! You're sure you can fly it?"

"You betcha!" the robot declared.

"Okay, then," Roland said. He looked out over the hangar bay. Higgins was still standing near the beacon, but the two badass-looking Lance troops in heavy armor were lumbering away and firing down at the endless horde of geth still pouring into the hangar. "My team can grab that beacon and get it over to the shuttle faster than yours can."

Alenko nodded after a moment. He pointed to the shuttle.

"We'll get the robot to the shuttle and cover you while you bring the beacon over," he said, and Roland nodded in turn.

The brotherhood of battle was a strange thing. Less than an hour ago, these two men had been prepared to kill each other. But circumstances, morals, and the rare quality of level-headed sanity had conspired to put Marine and ex-Lanceman toward the same bloody purpose. Thus they turned to their men, relayed their orders, and an unlikely alliance of betrayed mercenaries, dedicated Marines, power-drunk Siren, and vengeful Claptrap surged back into the fray.

* * *

The docking level was not quite as chaotic as the maintenance level below, as only a dozen geth had reached that floor, and twice as many Crimson Lance troops were dug in around the beacon. Some were wounded, but all were laying down intense fire, most of all the two elite, badass soldiers in their heavy armor. When Roland's squad emerged, it took the Lance only a few moments to orient toward the new threat, and the trio of ex-Lance were forced into cover, firing and maneuvering between heavy loading and maintenance equipment and cargo crates designed by whatever wonderful engineer had realized they needed to be rated against anti-ship weaponry. Roland redeployed his Scorpio turret to cover them, the heavy gun blasting apart enemy shields and forcing the Higgin's Lancemen back into cover.

Below, the battle had turned against the Lance and Hyperion troops, with only a few knots of the former still fighting, and the latter having been surrounded in the center of the bay and falling one by one in a storm of blue tracer fire from the synthetics. Several Lance troops on the second floor were fighting toward the Hyperion shuttle, trading fire with Alenko's Marines as they did the same.

Bullets deflected off his shields as Roland dashed for cover behind a cargo container, squeezing off bursts at the enemy. Lilith exploded among a group of geth advancing on their flank, and Roland heard her laughing over the constant scream and rumble of gunfire. His ECHO flashed, and, thinking it was Alenko calling him, he acknowledged.

"Fuck you, Roland!" Higgins screamed, and the ex-Sergeant shook his head. "Why can't you just DIE? Fine time for you to find morals, you hypocritical-"

"I don't have time for this," Roland grunted quietly, closing the channel. He pumped a hand, waving Williams forward, and she ran past. He leaned out, laying down suppressing fire until she reached the next bit of cover. She started firing in turn, and Roland stepped out.

"Sarge, hold pos-" Reiss shouted, and then a grenade flew past his faceplate. He jerked to a halt and hurled himself back behind cover.

The detonation tossed him off his feet and blew apart Roland's shields. Ringing filled his ears, and he thought he could taste blood. He rolled over onto his stomach, pain flashing all along his body, and pushed himself to his knees with his left hand. His rifle was held in a death grip in his right.

One of the huge, heavily-armed Lance soldiers stepped around the corner of the cargo container, a massive squad-support machinegun in hand. He hefted the heavy weapon toward Roland, who snarled a curse and raised his own rifle.

Just as the badass Lanceman pulled the trigger, bullets smashed into his flank, setting his shield ablaze and wreathing him in harsh blue light. The Lanceman whirled toward Reiss, who was emptying his rifle's magazine into the hulking figure's flank. The shields collapsed as Roland opened fire in turn, but he watched with agonized frustration as just about every round he fired just deflected or crumpled off the heavy armor.

Then Williams ran behind the badass Lanceman's back, jamming a grenade into his belt. He spun toward her, shouting in surprise, but she was already vaulting over a parked light cargo-lifter. He took a step toward her, oblivious to the actual threat until it literally exploded his pants off.

The heavy armor kept the man's upper body mostly intact, but the detonation blew his lower body into mist and ceramic shrapnel and threw what was left a few meters away.

"Good teamwork," Roland grunted, pushing himself up and stumbling back into cover. "Now we just have to-"

The second badass, surrounded by half a dozen Lancemen, stomped into view around another cargo loader, and raised a rocket launcher to his shoulder.

"Burn, Roland!" he heard Higgins shout over the gunfire, and the launcher belched out a trio if missiles at his position.

* * *

Lightning played over the geth trooper's metal skin, and it twitched violently. The flashlight head exploded, and it dropped in a squealing heap of metal and plastic. Lilith shifted her aim, and put two more electrical rounds from the Maliwan shock pistol into another synthetic. The elemental rounds exploded against the geth's shields, and the lightning bursts that slashed over the geth's body blew out shield projectors and scrambled processor cores. The geth toppled, and she shot it another time to make sure it was down.

Keeping the geth off Roland's squad as they assaulted the beacon made sense; if anyone was suited for wiping out flankers, it was someone as fast as a Phasewalking Siren. And if she could keep the robots off them, they would be clear to grab the beacon. Lilith wanted the device not just because it was worth a fortune, but also because of the Eridian tech and its relation to her abilities. She didn't think she could _perfectly _trust Roland's crew - they _were_ Crimson Lance, even if they had turned on Atlas - but they could be trusted to be motivated for profit.

The Siren's eyes snapped up as she heard an explosion, and saw the body of one of the Lance badasses fly through the air. She spotted Roland's group, still advancing toward the beacon, but in their path were several more Lance troops, as well as the other badass, and he was toting a launcher and staring in Roland's general direction.

Lilith felt a sudden clenching in her chest, then stepped out of reality immediately and charged toward them. She didn't have time to think, least of all about her reaction, but some distant part of her was surprised that the sight made her...afraid?

She'd held her wrath from Roland's team because they had been willing to act like decent people - a rarity among the Lance. And they had been useful this far. But the fact that she _cared_ about them at all came as a sudden shock to her.

Lilith grit her currently-ethereal teeth as she charged toward the Lance with liquid speed. The badass raised the launcher and depressed the trigger, and she felt another jolt of terror as the rockets screamed toward Roland's position. They hit the cargo container and a distant vibration of force and noise touched her in her ethereal state. She saw the blast, a grayed-out flare of light and smoke and debris, and at least one body wearing the stripped-down armor Roland's crew now bore went tumbling through the air for several meters. The Lance troops surrounding the badass started cheering.

Then she was between the Lance troops, the surging power rolling off her ethereal body. Lightning cascaded over the mercenaries, and she shoved her hand into the badass trooper's back. The phenomenal cosmic power coursing through her slammed down into an itty-bitty contact point, and she pumped it through her fist into the trooper's back.

Armor shattered, and bodies went flying among a storm of lightning. The badass toppled, and other Lance troopers fell around her. She spun, drawing her pistol, and sighted a pair of Lance troopers still standing and reeling from the Phaseblast. She shot them both with quick double-taps through their facemasks, and their bodies toppled with jerky movements as the shock rounds detonated inside their helmets.

"What the shit?" shouted a Lance officer, and Lilith spun toward him, raising her pistol. He was about twenty meters away, near the Eridian device. Lilith guessed this was that Higgins bastard who had tried to set up Roland's execution, and she started to sight him when something moved behind her.

She had a split-second to act, and immediately tumbled forward into a roll. The rocket launcher smashed down into the floor where she had been standing a moment prior, and Lilith whirled around, switching her pistol for her submachinegun in a glowing blur of digistruct light.

The badass Lance trooper surged toward her with surprising speed for someone so large and heavily-armored. Smoke trailed from his armor where the lightning had scored across the ceramic plating, and the backpack power supply and ammunition cache had been flattened, but that didn't matter. The badass slammed into Lilith with his shoulder as she pulled the trigger, her rounds deflecting off the heavy armor. The impact blew the air out of her lungs and launched her back a few meters.

_Moron,_ she thought to herself as she hit the floor and rolled to her feet. _Check to make sure the target is dead first!_ She snapped up the submachinegun and backed away, firing as she did so. The badass just twisted in place, putting his armored shoulder in the line of fire, and calmly pulled a racking lever on the side of the launcher. A fresh magazine of missiles locked in place.

"Ah, shit," she hissed, and reached for the well of power once more. Energy started flickering through her, but it was too soon since the last Phasewalk. She needed a few more seconds to recover before she could properly harness the power again. Lilith scrambled sideways, her rounds bouncing off the badass' armor as he pivoted to target her with the launcher. He started to fire.

There was a click, a hiss, a beep, and then a Scorpio turret put eight heavy rounds into the hulking Lance trooper's back in one long burst. The badass jerked from the impact, and the barrage of rockets went wide, exploding a few meters to Lilith's left and a dozen behind her.

The massive Lanceman didn't turn toward the turret. Instead he racked the lever again and targeted her once more. Lilith dug in her heels as he sighted her, grabbed at the tingling conduit of power, and the stuttering flow intensified.

She stepped out of reality right as the missiles would have struck her. The explosives were detonated by the Phaseblast, and Lilith charged with a feral grin. As she charged, she saw the badass drop to his knees, blood flying as bullets punched through his battered armor and exploded through thinner leg plates. And advancing through the debris and smoke and dust was a man covered in blood, broken chunks of Lance armor hanging from his body, firing an assault rifle with grim determination. That had to be Roland.

The Lance trooper turned toward him on one knee, dropping the rocket launcher and producing a machinegun. He started to take aim, when Lilith's incorporeal hand slapped his corporeal shoulder, and a torrent of lightning and kinetic force shattered armor and hurled him through the air. He skipped off the solid guard railing and dropped to the lower level.

She turned toward Roland, grinning at the tingle that ran through her, only to have him slide into cover close to her beside some kind of loading cradle. This close, she could see his face under the broken chunks of his Lance helmet: strong features, dark skin, brown eyes, and a determined set in his jaw. Lilith crouched beside him, and he wiped the blood from the side of his face.

"You hurt?" she asked, and he grunted.

"Banged up by that blast, but it looks a lot worse than it is. Gotta thank whoever made those cargo crates. They'd last through a nuke." Bullets struck near their position, and they both winced. "Reiss got the worst part of it but his shield saved him. Williams is patching him up."

He rose and started firing at the Lance troops near the artifact, and Lilith followed suit. As they traded shots with the mercenaries by the beacon, their ECHOs lit up. Alenko's face popped up in the corner of their HUDs.

"This is Alenko," he reported. "We're at the shuttle. No casualties. Initiating-"

"BOW BEFORE MY KEYPAD MANIPULATING PROWESS, FEEBLE DOOR!"

"-entry."

"Copy that," Roland replied as he crouched to reload. "We're close to the beacon. Some minor wounds, no casualties."

"Need some support?" Alenko asked.

"Negative, we've got this."

"Copy that. Good luck." He closed the line.

Lilith and Roland kept firing on the Lance troops, and she saw at least one go down. The Higgins guy who kept barking orders was still alive, though, and yelling at his men and shouting curses at his foes. Lilith ducked down to reload her submachinegun, and caught movement behind her. She glanced back and spotted Williams and Reiss catching up, the latter's uniform stained a darker red in spots.

"Sarge, we've got your back," Reiss grunted, in obvious pain but also not caring.

"Okay, Reiss, Williams," Roland said with a nod. "Supporting fire. Lilith and I are going for that beacon."

"And Higgins," Williams said, and Roland grunted.

"Damned straight," he replied. He glanced to Lilith, who found herself nodding. "Advance!"

* * *

Williams and Reiss opened fire, spraying the few remaining Lancemen with suppressing fire. They advanced into it with determination and grit, bounding and shooting with coordinated movements. Roland leapt up and charged, heart pounding, and Lilith circled around the opposite way, red tracers leaping from her submachinegun. He threw out the deployment canister for his freshly-reloaded Scorpio as he ran, and fired a couple of bursts on the move, but didn't stop until he reached an overturned cargo loader. As he reloaded, Roland keyed his ECHO.

"Higgins!" he shouted. "Got no one left to hide behind now!"

"Fuck you, Roland!" the Lance officer shouted back. "I don't need them! I'll kneecap you and make you drink your own stomach aci-"

Lilith Phasewalked, the detonation drowning out the rest of the threat, and Roland stepped out during the distraction. He heard his Scorpio pounding away, and a Lanceman was blasted off his feet. He ran from cover to cover under the suppressing fire from his squadmates and the turret, and a blossom of lightning and a charred body tumbling through the air heralded Lilith's return. Roland sighted another Lance trooper - a man who an hour and a half ago would have been his comrade - and put a dozen rounds through his chest.

Then Higgins stood from behind another battered cargo loader, not ten meters away, with his face twisted in a murderous grimace, but he was targeting Lilith as she burned down two more Lance troops. Roland snapped his sights to the center of Higgins' face and pulled the trigger. The rifle howled in his hands, pounding against his shoulder, and Higgins' shield erupted around his head. He jerked back behind cover almost instantly, and Roland snatched a grenade from his belt and hurled it around the side of the vehicle.

Higgins leapt around the opposite side a moment later, shouting and cursing. The detonation shook the floor, but Roland had braced himself, and kept his aim dead-steady. More importantly, do were the rest of his squad, and everyone opened fire as Higgins reappeared. Twenty rounds from four separate guns drilled into Higgins' shields and armor within the heartbeat he emerged, and he ducked back, leaving blood on the floor.

Roland charged after him, heart pounding and anger burning in his chest. This was _too easy_. He wanted something harder. More _satisfying_. Higgins damned well deserved a prolonged death, after he jeopardized a mission trying prove a point. After killing Jenkins. After nearly killing the only men in this entire company who had any sense of morals, for his goddamned _bottom line._

"Higgins!" he shouted, rounding the loader. "Get back here!"

The Lance officer was limping away, omnitool glowing as he applied Insta-Health to his wounds. Roland saw where he was headed; only ten meters away he could see the Eridian device, looming overhead in a gleaming field of green light. It was mounted on a conveyor trolley, and had been prepared to be quickly loaded on the Crimson Lance transport, but now it simply sat in the open. Higgins struggled toward the device.

"Higgins!" Roland shouted, and the Lieutenant dropped his rifle. It clattered to the floor, and in a flash of blue, a missile launcher digistructed into his fingers. He raised the weapon to toward the artifact.

"Back off, Roland!" he shouted. "Or I blow it! You want this damned thing as much as I do, don't you?"

Roland heard a distant explosion as Lilith Phasewalked again. Roland didn't bother looking toward her, and instead kept his weapon trained on Higgins' back.

"You won't be able to kill me before I pull the trigger, Roland," Higgins said with a grin.

"I won't need to," Roland replied. At the corner of his vision, he saw lightning sparking along the floor as Lilith closed in.

Then a blue corona surged around Higgins and yanked him off his feet. He let out a shocked cry, and the missile launcher fired straight up into the ceiling as he was sent twisting and spinning through the air over the center of the bay. Then a blue streak arced overhead and slammed into Higgins from above, and he was smashed down into the lower floor.

"Uh," Roland said, lowering his rifle. "Well."

The air shook a few meters away, and the echoing explosion of a Phasewalk sounded almost petulant. Lilith appeared, arms crossed.

"That was anticlimactic," she muttered. Even with her face hidden behind her helmet, he could tell she was pissed.

Alenko's face appeared in Roland's HUD.

"You're welcome," the biotic Marine grunted. "Claptrap's got the shuttle online. We'll maneuver it over to that side of the bay and load up the beacon."

At his words, the shuttle's engines began rumbling. Geth, Lance, and Hyperion troops started shooting up at it almost at once, and more geth were advancing toward the docking level with the core of the Lance resistance on that level wiped out. Roland turned toward the synthetics as they regrouped and began firing at the shuttle from the upper level.

"Defensive positions, people!" Roland shouted, casting aside his frustration at Higgins' anticlimactic end. "Reiss, Williams, to my spot. We hold the ground around this-"

Purple light flooded the floor around him, and Roland spun around, shouldering his rifle, but he lowered it when he saw the green field around the Eridian device had changed colors. The stones rotating around the spire were spinning faster, their lines gleaming.

And the field snapped out and ensnared Lilith before she could react.

"Whoa, what the-" she started to say, and Roland leapt toward her. He grabbed her arm.

Heat stabbed into his hand, burning straight through his gloves. Ballistic weave began to melt, and he recoiled from the blistering fire rolling off of the Siren. Fire wreathed his arm, and he tore the detachable sleeve off. He stumbled back, shielding his eyes with his gun hand from the brilliant light wreathing Lilith's armor.

Something leapt out from her body, a blade-like shape of pure golden flame, and a moment later it split apart, resolving into wings of searing fire.

* * *

Lilith was more surprised than afraid when the Eridian device grabbed her. She had expected as much _when _the device activated, but she hadn't expected it to activate _so abruptly_. Otherwise she would have warned everyone.

She felt Roland grab at her, and tried opening her mouth to warn him off, but the field wrapping around her, locking her arms and legs and head in place, refused to let her move enough to open her mouth. He released her a moment later, and she hoped it had been before he was hurt too badly.

She could sense the heat from the device and the conduit of power running through her, but there was no pain. The device interacted with the surging cosmic power within her, and she could feel it adjusting and changing, sensations of living energy awakening and shifting within her.

Then knowledge poured into her brain. Thoughts, alien and twisted in nature - not repulsive or abhorrent, but nothing like anything a human mind was wired to comprehend. Images, sensations, tastes, smells, thoughts - thoughts so complex that they couldn't have been the product of a human mind - machinegunned through her brain.

Then she saw a shape: circle, with an elongated, inverted "U" in the center.

_There! _she thought. _Where is it?_

More thoughts and images: Snowbound peaks. A world of six-year seasons. Purple minerals stabbing through soil and rock and flesh. A serpent five hundred meters in length formed of metal and flesh and gleaming lines. A battleship appearing to be made of diamond and chrome. A buried tomb.

_Where is the Vault?_ she screamed in her mind.

A burning world, surrounded by warships kilometers long, each with long tendrils, contours like an aquatic animal, and wreathed in red lightning. Her mind's eye narrowed. The shape was familiar, but where there the Eridian markings she had seen on the dreadnought outside?

As she focused on the image, other sensations accompanied it: terror, hate, and loss. Deep-rooted and pain and fear, and somewhere in there, a vague sense of triumph and satisfaction. She felt her stomach twist at the torrent of familiar yet utterly alien emotions.

Then the field released her, and she dropped to the floor. The stones surrounding the spire hit the floor alongside her. Lilith gasped, coughing violently, and fought to keep her stomach under control. Pain ran through her, spiking and fading erratically, and the conduit of energy that fed her powers pulsed and waned with all the violence of a hurricane in a gas giant. She thought she could hear rumbling vibrations and gunfire, and pushed herself to her feet.

A hand grabbed her and yanked her to the floor.

"Stay down!" Roland shouted, and she decided not to argue with him. Blackness swam up around the edges of her vision, but she could see movement all around her: the gold-and-white slab-sides of a Hyperion shuttle, gray and crimson uniforms moving around her, bullet casings raining from digistruct weapons and shimmering in the light of a dozen muzzle flashes. Someone lifted her up, and then there was a wonderful sense of weightlessness.

Then darkness.

* * *

The air was filled with back-and-forth tracer fire. Roland's Scorpio pumped out an endless stream of heavy machinegun rounds. Dozens of geth were closing in on the shuttle from all sides, and the Marines and ex-Lance fought furiously to hold them back. Synthetics closed in, relentless and emotionless, advancing from cover to cover, willingly sacrificing themselves and drawing fire so that others could move safely.

"Get it aboard!" Kaidan shouted, constantly surrounded by a blue corona as he hurled advancing geth around the bay as quickly he could manage without passing out. Two Marines dragged the trolley up into the shuttle while two more shielded them.

"_Vamanos_, friends!" Claptrap shouted from the cockpit. "We have to fly! Like leaves on the wind!"

"Beacon secured!" a Marine shouted. "All wounded are on board!" Kaidan nodded.

"Everyone on board, now!" he shouted. "Move!"

Kaidan and Roland stood on the ramp, shoulder to shoulder, cutting down geth as the rest of their ragtag group hurried back aboard. The last of the Marines hurried onto the ship under their covering fire, and they retreated up the ramp.

"Claptrap, go!"

"Hold on to your waste disposal subsytems!" the robot shouted, and the shuttle lurched away from the dock. Kaidan and Roland and several Marines stayed at the ramp, firing upon any optimistic geth with one hand while holding on for dear life at Claptrap's unsteady piloting with the other. The shuttle swerved away, and they caught a look at the bay below.

"Dammit!" Roland hissed.

"What?" Kaidan asked.

"Bastard's still alive," Roland muttered, and Kaidan looked down at the lower level. Below, the last of the Crimson Lance, about fifteen men, were fighting a desperate last stand, surrounded by more than a hundred geth. In the middle, Kaidan spotted the officer whom he had pulled away from the artifact and smashed into the deck. Somehow, his armor had cushioned him enough that getting spiked into the floor hadn't killed him. Not immediately, anyway.

"He won't make it out of that," Kaidan said, with a shake of his head, and the thrusters fired. They shot out of the hangar bay, and Kaidan signaled for the ramp to close.

"Now, we have a bigger problem," the Marine said, and started through the cargo bay. Roland followed.

"That being?" he asked, and Kaidan pointed straight up.

"Wha-oh, crap."

"Yeah," Kaidan said. "Claptrap, get us moving fast as you can!"

"I'm givin' 'er all she's got, cap'n!" the robot shouted back.

"Less references," Kaidan shouted as he ran up to the cockpit, "More avoiding the giant death beams!"

* * *

Above them, the titanic machine bearing Eridian markings turned toward the escaping shuttle, and a glowing red light signaled that they had caught its deadly attention. Countless voices whispered, feeding into a greater whole, forming a single tremendous will which made a swift and decisive choice. Targeting systems calculated the firing solution, and endless arrays of generators and capacitors fed energy into the liquid metal projector that would swat the shuttle out of the sky.

But one voice spoke louder than the others.

_Wait,_ it said, _The device is aboard, and we need it still._

The millions heard the one, and they heeded its wisdom. _Yes,_ they murmured. _This is true._

Another decision was made. The firing process was aborted, and power was shunted to other systems. Phasing systems began charging for the extraction.

And deep within the monstrous vessel, a organic lungs breathed a quiet sigh of relief. Disaster averted.

For now.

* * *

"They're not shooting," Alenko said, confused. "Why aren't they shooting?"

"Who cares?" Roland said. "Claptrap, get us out of atmosphere and into FTL!"

"On it!" the robot said, and they shot up out of the atmosphere. Geth ships did not react to them as they ascended.

"We've got the device on board," Alenko said, and Roland slowly nodded. They had come all this way for that beacon, so they wouldn't destroy it.

But if that were the case, why were they not pursuing the shuttle, either? A boarding team could secure the shuttle, and the geth had already spent hundreds of platforms trying to take it.

What the hell was going on here?

Roland had no idea, and still hadn't figured it out when they breached atmosphere and Claptrap triggered the faster than light drive.

* * *

"Die! Die you synthetic freaks! DIE!"

Higgins rifle pounded against his shoulder as he poured rounds into the geth. The flashlight-faced machines advanced from all sides, a constant torrent of blue pulse weapon fire slicing into his men from all sides. Lancemen were falling around him, riddled with smoking wounds, screaming in terror, dropping in heaps of dead flesh and torn armor.

"Damn you, Roland!" he screamed, dropping a spent rifle and grabbing another from a dying Lance soldier. He cut down two more geth before the gun ran dry, and he ripped another weapon from another fallen soldier.

His shield meter was depleted. Rounds skipped off his heavy officer-grade armor. Something hit him in the back; he whirled to strike, only to find it was the corspe of another Lance trooper, slumping against him. Another mercenary crouched beside him, but his head snapped backward as a bullet went through one of the eyeplates.

Higgins raised his weapon, screaming in impotent rage and fear, blasting another geth. How had this happened? How had Roland managed to ruin _everything_?

Something struck him in the gut, and he found himself staring at the ceiling of the hangar. He blinked, gasping for breath, but he couldn't seem to fill his lungs all the way. He rolled over, looking for his rifle, but it was gone.

The hangar was dead silent. He fumbled for his pistol, and it formed out from his SDU into unsteady fingers. The pistol fell from his hand and clattered across the floor. It stopped against another dead Lanceman's shoulder.

No. Not like this. Not before he could make Roland pay for this . . . this . . . _all of this._

They were all dead. No one remained to follow his orders, to save him from what was about to happen. He gasped, letting anger fuel his movements, and reached for his pistol with feeble fingers. His hands brushed weapon's grip.

Something cold wrapped around his neck, and the air he was struggling for rushed out of him. He was dragged up to his feet, and then off them.

Higgins gasped, choking, and stared into a set of harsh, glowing blue eyes set into a nightmare face of gray, leathery flesh, narrow avian features, long, spear-like spines, and gleaming blue wiring. A dark pair of lines ran down the face, framing the cold eyes, converging at to top of its head.

"You have heart, human," murmured a voice, harsh like cast iron, with a hint of electronic augmentation. "I can use that."

"Fuck you, turian," Higgins choked out somehow.

"Where is the Eridian device?" the turian asked, his words quiet but intent. Higgins nearly spat in the alien's face, but couldn't cough up enough spit to manage it. The edges of his vision grew dark.

"Roland," he squeaked. "Alliance Marines. A Siren!"

"I asked where, not who," the turian snarled. "_Where_ did they take it?"

"I . . . don't . . . ."

The turian released him. He flopped to the floor, gasping, and through his blurred vision he saw the turian looming over him, clad in bone-white armor. Spikes and blades poked from parts of it, while others were smooth and almost organic in nature. The turian crouched over him, cocking its nightmare face. Higgins wondered how a turian could look so tall and emaciated, even for one of their looming, slender breed, and realized that it had something to do with the inverted letter "U" that slashed down his face.

"I know that it was taken, and I need to know more, but you are in no condition to assist me, human," the alien said. The face leaned a bit closer.

"But you will be soon enough. Rest assured-"

* * *

The recording came to an abrupt halt. A mutter of annoyance sounded from the slender figure sitting on the minimalist chair. Dim red light reflected off mirror-polished floor tiles, illuminating a thin face.

"Telemetry from that soldier indicates a geth termination-shot to the head destroyed the recording gear built into his armor," a woman's voice spoke, and the slender man nodded. He picked up a glass of brandy and swirled it absently.

"It'll do," he said, and smiled. "You've got plenty of other raw recordings from the rest of the base."

"Yes sir," the woman replied, her voice distorted faintly by the speaker filtering it. She stared back at him through a holographic projection: pale skin, black hair, empty blue eyes.

"Alright, then," he said, sitting back. "So, let's break it down. Beacon's been accessed by someone who can actually use it and read the data."

"Yes, sir."

"We've got all the equipment and resources in place to track them," he added.

"Yes, sir."

"And they've gotten clear despite the unexpected intervention of the Eridian-empowered ship," he continued.

"Yes, sir."

"And," he added, "Our competitors will be facing severe fines for raiding one of our bases on an Alliance world."

"Extremely likely, sir."

"Not to mention," he continued, "We've finally pinned down one more of the six human Sirens in the entire universe."

"...yes, sir."

He grinned and threw back the glass. When he finished, he wiped his lips with a flourish, and giggled.

"Better than I expected, but not quite as good as I hoped. But we're still way ahead.

I'd say that's a win."

"Agreed, sir."

"So, pull up the rest of the list, and get ready for the next phase."

"Already done.

"Excellent," he said. "You make me...well, _less _disappointed. Which is _very impressive_, Angel."

"Thank you, sir."

* * *

_**Codex: Humanity And the Systems Alliance: Megacorporations**_

_The so-called "megacorporations" form a central component of the economic and military power of the "human sphere of influence" in the galaxy. Formed by a combination of loose control by the central government of the human Systems Alliance, large amounts of resource-rich worlds, limited competition toward expansion, intense business savvy, and an appalling lack of ethics in favor of profit-focused growth and development, human megacorporations such as Jakobs, Anshin, Hyperion, Atlas, and Dahl have grown to become massive powers in their own rights, acting as interstellar nation-states in all but name. _

_Megacorporations possess massive military forces, with many forming their own specialized and distinctive mercenary forces, such as the Atlas Corporation's Crimson Lance, or the Dahl Corporation's Colonial Marine Corps. Other corporations have outright purchased existing mercenary groups, such as the Maliwan corporation buying out and integrating the Eclipse mercenary army into its own military forces, or the Blood Pack being bought clan-by-clan by the Vladof corporation. Other corporations have formed mergers with existing military powers, most famously being the immensely controversial merger between the Torgue corporation and the krogan clan Urdnot. These powerful military forces often lead to corporations clashing with one another, as well as other galactic corporations or military powers, in Terminus space or on the "border" worlds where Alliance and Citadel law are not recognized._

_Despite their power, megacorporations have faced difficulty expanding and operating both in their "home" space in the Systems Alliance as well as in larger Citadel-controlled space. Corporations are legally barred from open conflict in these regions and face immense fines and legal sanctions for breaking these laws. Most megacorporations are also required by Citadel law to adhere to the authority of a Council Spectre, although like all legal restrictions, Spectre authority is ignored or undermined the further one gets from Citadel and Alliance territory._

* * *

**_Author's__ Notes:_** This chapter was where the story really started to click for me (as evidenced by the fact that I slammed out about 12,000 words in three days) where I started to get how to write Roland, and also discovered how to write Kaidan. Working on handsome Jack, though we're not really seeing him in a setting where he is his classic snarky, malicious, condescending douchebag self.

This chapter heralds the end of the Eden Prime arc, and next chapter we'll start seeing what trouble that beacon is really going to cause, as well as start venturing into the larger_ NGOG_ setting.

Until next chapter . . . .


	4. Chapter 4: Bloody Business

"This is Emily Wong, coming to you live from Illium, where the Torgue-Urdnot corporation is unveiling their newest headquarters building: The Spike of Baddasery!"

Nights on Illium were rarely dark. There were just too many light sources from too many buildings in the planet's vast cities, resulting in perpetual twilight during the nighttime hours. Aircars streamed past the crowds gathered outside the Spike of Badassery: thousands of sapients, many asari but just as many of other species. Humans were scattered among the multitude of species, visible due to their wildly varying body shapes: a slender whip-thin woman barely seventy pounds in full clothes stood next to a hulking brute weighing in at over five hundred. An unusually large assortment of krogan were on hand as well, but that was what happened when you dealt with a corporation half-owned by the biggest krogan clan in the galaxy. An excited murmur filled the air as they looked up at the tremendous tower overhead, dominating the Nos Astra skyline.

Emily Wong stood above the crowds on a viewing platform, protected from Illium's winds by a mass effect field that deflected the air around her and her camera crew. The dark-haired human woman reported gestured up toward the building everyone was gathered to commemorate the opening of: a vast, wide spire painted alternating red, black, and gold. Its architecture clashed almost violently with the elegant asari spires, consisting of sharp right angles and blocky shapes. But none of the asari buildings were close to its size; the only buildings in the city that could match it were the Maliwan Center of Graceful Humility, and the Hyperion Convergence Tower, both of which loomed in the distance.

"Now, if you've been paying attention to some of the controversy surrounding this ambitious project," Emily continued, "You'll know that the building's construction went well over budget when an additional ten levels were inexplicably added to an already-staggering eight hundred floors. But Citadel NewsNet has managed to do the impossible: we have managed to schedule a personal interview with Mr. Torgue himself regarding this unusual construction addition. And here he comes now!"

Mr. Torgue lumbered into the view of the holocameras, towering over the much smaller and genetically-normal Emily Wong. All massive muscles, he wore a massive mullet under a bright red bandana, large black sunglasses, and a mightily manly mustache.

"Mr. Torgue, I want to say how much of an honor it is to meet you in person!" Emily said, holding out her hand. He reached out with massive fingers and gingerly shook hers.

"YOUR PRESENCE IS JUST AS MUCH OF AN HONOR, MISS WONG," he screamed at the top of his lungs. "I DON'T OFTEN GET A CHANCE TO SPEAK TO A JOURNALIST OF YOUR INTEGRITY! MOST OF THEM WANT TO CONDUCT THE INTERVIEW FROM ORBIT, BECAUSE THEY CAN'T STAND THE POSSIBILITY OF BEING CAUGHT IN THE WAKE OF **PURE AWESOMENESS**."

"Indeed, they often are," Emily said, having taken a couple of steps back from the force of Mr. Torgue's speech. "We're only moments away from the ceremony commemorating the opening of the Spike of Badassery, Mr. Torgue. And everyone has been wondering about the secretive construction at the top of the tower. Could you shed some light on what's happening up there?"

"MISS WONG, I WOULD BE HAPPY TO! IN FACT, AS PART OF THE OPENING CEREMONY, I WILL BE SHOWING YOU EXACTLY WHAT THOSE FLOORS ARE FOR!"

A horn sounded over the speakers around the plaza, and everyone went quiet. The crowd looked up in expectation, and Mr. Torgue produced a cylindrical device from his pants pocket.

"BRACE YOURSELVES, MOTHERF_bleep_ERS!"

He pressed the button.

The top ten levels of the immense skyscraper exploded. A tremendous column of fire and light shot up into the night sky, shaped by mass effect fields of immense power to keep the flimsy debris from the limited construction from going anywhere but straight up. The fire and fury twisted and shaped, with much of it shooting about fifty meters in the air, but one part of the blast rising twice as high in a tight, narrow column.

The crowd gasped and cheered in awe of the tremendous detonation, which could be seen for many kilometers in all directions. But as the fires rose, Emily Wong frowned. She turned to Torgue, who was belting out a sick air guitar solo while the city around him was lit up by the tremendous, shaped gout of fire.

"MEEEOWOOOWOWMEEDLYMEEDLYOOOOOOW!" he was shouting.

"Mister Torgue," she said, "was it your intention to shape that explosion to look like a massive raised middle finger?"

"YOU ARE INDEED VERY OBSERVANT, MISS WONG!" Torgue shouted. "BUT THE PROPER DEFINITION OF THIS GIGANTIC BADASS _**EXPLOOOOOOSION**_ CAN ONLY BE APPRECIATED IN CONTEXT!"

She turned, looking back out over the city, and with a startled gasp, she understood.

The giant exploding middle finger was oriented toward both the Maliwan Center of Graceful Humility and the Hyperion Convergence Center.

"MEEDLEYMEEDLEYMEEDLEYMEEEEOWOOOWOOOW!" Mister Torgue shouted as he continued playing air guitar, while the Torgue-Urdnot Spike of Badassery flipped off their competitors. He then leaned in toward the camera and jabbed a finger at the lens.

"THAT IS HOW TORGUE-URDNOT DOES BUSINESS, MOTHERF_bleep_ERS!"

* * *

_**Chapter Four: Bloody Business**_

* * *

Roland sat in the back of the shuttle, listening to the faint rumble of the engines through the hull while cleaning one of the rifles stored in his SDU. The Alliance Marines and his own troops stood or sat around the bay, save for a couple off to one side being checked by Alenko. Among them lay Lilith.

Roland's helmet lay beside him - what was left of it, anyway. He guessed he would need to get a new one, but he might be able to repurpose most of his leftover armor into something useful. Everyone else had doffed their helmets too. Williams was dozing, her dark hair plastered to the sides of her head, while Reiss sat beside her, grinning quietly at Roland as he usually did after a completed mission. The Marines also possessed weary but triumphant looks, and there was a tense but welcome feeling of camaraderie around the shuttle bay.

Alenko had taken off his helmet and was sweeping over the worst wounded with his omnitool. He had a strong but not exceptional face, with short black hair that met in a point over his head. He glanced to his omnitool with dark eyes, and applied careful Insta-Health injections to the wounded, save for Lilith herself, who was the only one that was unconscious. Like everyone else, her helmet was off; Alenko had insisted on that to check her vitals. Roland hadn't been sure what to expect when the helmet had come off; he knew Sirens were supposed to be beautiful, but he hadn't expected a woman he looked barely out of her teens, with bright red hair and slender features. She looked oddly small and vulnerable laying there.

"Okay, no serious injuries," Alenko said as he finished the examination, and stood. "She's exhausted, and I'm getting some odd brain activity. I'd need a full medical suite to do a serious exam, but as far as I can tell she's fine."

"Good," Roland said with a nod. He collapsed his weapon back to digistruct space and stood. "Now we just need to figure out what to do."

Alenko nodded and gestured toward the ramp to the cockpit. Roland followed him up there, and once inside the small room he glanced over the readouts. They were about halfway across the Utopia system where Eden Prime was located, far enough out that no one could easily find them in the system.

"What now?" Roland asked, crossing his arms.

"Now, tacos!" Claptrap said. "Wait. I don't have a mouth. Or a digestive tract. So why do I want tacos?"

"I can guess that you wanted that beacon for less-than-noble reasons," Alenko said to Roland, ignoring the rambling robot. Roland nodded. "Don't get me wrong, I appreciate what you did down there. My Marines would have been hurt a lot worse than they are now without your help."

"And my team might have been wiped out without yours," Roland agreed. "We didn't go after the beacon just for money. We went after it for payback."

"Well, you got it in spades," Alenko said with another nod. "But the Alliance sent my team down there to acquire the thing, and we still need it. Especially considering the geth were after it so badly as to attack a core planet."

"My team aren't government soldiers," Roland said, shaking his head. "We're paid for our work."

"I can probably get you amnesty for helping the Alliance, and likely wipe whatever mark the Lance will put on you," Alenko said. "But the beacon is Alliance property, and . . . the Siren-"

"Lilith," Roland grunted immediately, and found himself a bit surprised he was so quick to correct the Marine. Alenko nodded.

"Lilith is, well, a rarity." He exhaled, and for a moment Roland could see the exhaustion in his features before he hid the weariness again. "The Alliance won't like it if-"

"Hell no," muttered a tired woman's voice from the entrance to the bridge. Roland and Alenko looked up to see Lilith leaning against the wall, posture alert but exhausted. Her gold eyes were narrowed, and she glared at both of them.

"Lilith," Roland said. "You okay?"

"Feel like I got spit up by a skag," she grunted, straightening. The room felt warmer than it had before, but when she stopped and breathed for a moment, it cooled again.

"You sure?" Alenko asked. "That beacon did a number on you."

"I'm fine," she said, shaking her head. "Just healthy enough to be experimented on by curious scientists against my will."

"That's not what I meant," Alenko said, and sighed at her glare. "Don't worry, I haven't reported you to the Alliance yet. I'm not going to, either, if I can avoid it. I owe you that much for helping us."

The anger faded from the Siren's eyes, and she slowly nodded.

"Good to know I'm not going to have to incinerate everyone on this tin can," she replied, only the slightest edge to her voice. "So, where are we headed, and who are we selling the beacon to?"

"Ideally, no one," Alenko said.

"I don't fight armies and get mindzapped by Eridian artifacts just for charity," Lilith muttered. "I'm not letting that artifact go without getting paid."

"The Alliance can't afford to let any corporation or Terminus power get the device," Alenko said, crossing his arms. "My orders were pretty clear. We're not letting that thing out of our hands."

"I don't think you have much of a choice," Lilith countered, and the air temperature shot up again. "I'm _getting paid_." The air around her began wavering slightly, and a moment later Alenko's body was sheathed by a blue aura. His face was partially hidden underneath the roiling surface of dark energy, but Roland could see the shift to hard certainty, and Alenko put a hand on his collapsed sidearm.

"Hey, enough!" Roland barked, stepping between Siren and Marine. His left side - the side facing Lilith - broke out into a sudden sweat, but he held up his hands to separate them. "We're on the same damn team here, and the last thing we need is you two ripping the ship apart!"

Both of them broke gazes and looked to him, and the fire - figuratively and literally - faded from Lilith. The blue aura around Alenko dissipated as well.

"Sorry," Lilith said, shaking her head. Alenko nodded.

"I apologize for that," he grunted softly.

"Yeah, long day," Lilith said in agreement. "Lots of internal bleeding."

"Okay, so we have a problem," Roland said once the air temperature returned to normal. "Lilith and my people need to get paid, while the Alliance needs the beacon. So, we sell the beacon to the Alliance."

The room was silent for a moment, before a quiet clang sounded as Lilith quietly bonked her her face against the bulkhead.

"Well, now I feel like an idiot," Alenko muttered. "Didn't consider that."

"Same here," Lilith said.

"So, how are we going to handle this?" Roland said.

"I can call the Alliance," Alenko said. "They should give a fair price for the beacon once we get to safe territory."

"No. Not Alliance space," Lilith said, and the Marine raised an eyebrow. "I'm not setting foot on an Alliance space station or planet. Not with the military ready for me, and not after what the corps and geth did on Eden Prime." Alenko nodded after a moment.

"Fair enough," he admitted, and Roland agreed. _Especially _after what they had just seen at Eden Prime. Even without the general attitude toward Sirens, Roland found it hard to believe the Systems Alliance could protect any location against attacks on the scale of the geth fleet that had just burned down Eden Prime.

"Omega?" Roland suggested. Lilith shook her head.

"Worse than Alliance territory, and an Alliance ship in the Terminus would trigger all kinds of violence."

"Agreed," Alenko said. "I doubt any Alliance captain would be willing to enter the heart of the Terminus anyway."

"Illium," Lilith said after a moment, her tone certain.

"The Gateway to the Terminus?" Alenko asked, and she nodded.

"Neutral territory," she said. "Accessible to the Alliance. Well-defended. Far enough out that the geth would have trouble getting there unseen. Perfect for this kind of deal."

"Except for the corporations," Roland said.

"Nothing we can avoid about that," Lilith said, her tone grim. "We'll just have to keep under their radar."

"I'll make the call," Alenko said, and opened the door to the cockpit. Roland glanced back to Lilith.

"Surprised you didn't suggest the Citadel," Roland said, "Considering how worried you are about the corps."

"Like hell I'd set foot on the Citadel," she said, a mocking laugh in her voice. "If a Siren can't trust the Alliance, there's no way one could trust the Council, let alone board the Citadel. A Siren trying that would be crazy."

* * *

Halfway across the galaxy, a Siren passed through Citadel Security, accompanied by the ominously cheery beep of a security scanner and a dangerously perky greeting from a smiling asari.

"Enjoy your stay on the Citadel," the blue-skinned alien said with a smile, and the Siren nodded back with one of her own. Inwardly, she wondered whether the asari even knew what kind of human she was talking to. The Siren stepped through the scanner, recovered her bags and SDU - loaded with weapons that were all _perfectly _legal thanks to the weapons permits she had carefully forged - and stepped out into the Ward proper beyond.

The familiar, stale scent of filtered, mass-manufactured air wafted past her, carrying the distinct bouquet of a dozen species all existing in a limited area. The distant hum of aircar engines and the faint, deep alert chimes of incoming shuttles could be heard behind her, over the low, constant murmur of sapients talking. Crowds moved past in the open street just outside the station, composed of the dozen or so species that occupied Citadel space: a few lumbering quadrupedal elcor and the humpbacked forms of krogan visible among the thinner and smaller salarian, turian, and asari people making up the majority of the crowd. She spotted a couple of volus waddling here and there. Humans were scattered among the crowds as well, almost all of them baselines with only slight genetic abnormalities.

"Welcome to Zakera Ward," the baseline human officer sitting behind the desk said as she walked out of the checkpoint. He was older, hair a mix of white and blond, with a gruff voice used to barking orders. She nodded to him, but the evaluating look he gave her was far more alert and intent than the perky asari in the checkpoint itself. The Siren glanced around the interior of the small security station, noting the officers moving in and out of the station or working at their desks. It took her only a few moments to evaluate everything, and conclude that the officer was local station chief.

And the only reason the local chief would be talking to her would be if she was important. Which meant someone had noticed _what _she was, and that meant everyone would know in short order. Unfortunate, but, well, unsurprising.

"Hi," she offered. "You in charge around here?"

"The law in these here parts," the chief replied with a faux borderlands accent. He glanced down at his data screen. "Captain Bailey, Zakera Precinct. Not often we get a woman of your skin condition in the heart of Citadel space, Miss . . . Maya?"

She nodded, and spotted a reflection of her face in the holographic screen of his computer. It was an older picture - her hair was shorter in it, still growing out from the much shorter bob she'd sported while still a lackey of the Order of the Impending Storm - but it matched her well enough: thin features, blue-gray eyes, blue hair hanging down the sides of her face, tall and lean and limber. She was still wearing a hardsuit in that picture, unlike her current outfit: a light yellow-orange leotard of ballistic-weave on her upper body that allowed for excellent freedom of movement, and a looser set of brown ballistic-weave fatigue pants and combat boots. She wore a gray colonist's jacket over the leotard, but that was mostly to hide the complex assortment of blue whorls and Eridian script flowing down the left side of her body that marked what she was.

"Just announce it to the whole Citadel already," she said, keeping her tone deadpan.

"You were already marked by C-Sec hours before you set foot on the station," Bailey replied. "Not much we could do about that. The kind of attention that someone like you catches is difficult to avoid. Especially considering what you did on Athenas."

Maya sighed and nodded, stepping toward the doorway leading out of the station and into the crowds beyond. No one reacted to her, not even to her odd hair color, which was a perfectly natural,benign offshoot of one of the minor mutagenic strains Maliwan had introduced a century back. It was a disconcerting sensation to not have everyone staring at her with slackjawed awe, or slack-jawed greed. Anonymity was a rare experience for her.

"So, what's with the guards?" Maya asked, keeping her tone casual. Bailey glanced up from his desk, and his eyes flicked to the pair of C-Sec officers looming a bit too close and a bit to intentionally casual. A human and a turian, wearing the usual black-and-blue ballistic-weave-under-hardsuit armor of Citadel Security, were standing and talking idly, but their eyes kept a regular pattern of checking her, scanning the concourse outside the station, and then back to her. Bailey grunted.

"Don't worry about them," he said. "They're not here to stick their heads up your ass. Opposite in fact."

"Really," Maya replied, her tone dry. "I'm not eager to shove mine up theirs."

"Oh, ha ha. I'm dead serious, poor choice of words notwithstanding," Bailey said. "Look, we're trying to keep the fact that a . . . someone like you passed through as quiet as possible, which means that you've got maybe an hour before everyone with an interest in females with blue tattoos and mystical powers knows you're here. And women like you are legendary for bringing trouble. The last time we had someone like you here, she was a krogan."

He visibly shuddered at that memory, and Maya winced in sympathy. Krogan Sirens were on the top of the galaxy's "Seriously, Do Not Fuck With" list.

"So, what, they're my bodyguards?" Maya asked, frowning. The deep-space dryness of her tone spoke of her opinion on that.

"In a manner of speaking," Bailey said with a shrug. "Mostly they're just there to deter the riff-raff by pointing out that we're watching your back. That and to give me an early warning if a sector of the Wards is about to explode."

"No offense to your guys, Captain," the Siren said, "but anyone able to tackle me won't be deterred by a couple of C-Sec troops."

"It's not the ones _able _I'm worried about," Bailey replied. "Its the ones _willing_. Much as I don't like morons, I'd rather some idiot hotshot who thinks he can drop a Siren think twice before he gets turned into mush. The paperwork for a justified self-defense killing is still a nightmare."

"Fair enough," she replied. "Anyone in particular I should watch out for?"

"I'd have to sit you down for a day-long brief on that," Bailey grunted with exhaustion. "Worst customer on this Ward is a fella named Fist. Human, got some bruiser mutations to him. Runs half the crime on Zakera."

"Never taken him down?" Maya asked, curious.

"Never got the go-ahead," Bailey said. "A big-shot is covering him. Might be a megacorps or a Citadel big-wig. C-Sec can't pin him down enough with whoever it is running interference. So watch yourself out there."

"Thanks," Maya said with a nod.

"You can thank me by giving me a head's up if you plan to start something," the captain replied.

"I'm not planning on killing anyone if I can avoid it," she said. After a moment's thought, she added, "I'm looking for a volus. Barla Von. I just need to talk to him and then I'll be gone, hopefully."

"Presidium, financial district," Bailey replied almost immediately. His fingers danced over the haptic interface. "I'll clear you to be on that level."

"I appreciate it."

"Just keep the collateral to a minimum," Bailey said. "Not easy. I mean, come on. There's enough of our species on the Citadel to make that impossible these days. But I'd appreciate it all the same."

* * *

Three security stations down, ten C-Sec officers stood ready in full armor, weapons in hand and ready to aim. They watched the doorway with cautious intent, and a moment later a mass of muscle and restrained violence sauntered through the doorway. He loomed over the baseline humans and equivalently-sized aliens, clad in tight-fitting jeans and a muscle shirt of ballistic weave that strained against the rippling slab of meat. His face was a squarish mass that had been broken and repaired often, and his hair was brown and shaved close. A necklace with a dog's paw dangled from his neck.

He was human, and blessed by the random assortment of genetic mutations that permeated the human genome: not only was he huge and covered in enough dense muscle to let him heft small vehicles with no trouble, but he walked with a steady ease that warned he was quick on his feet, and he spoke with a clarity of intellect that confirmed he was at least reasonably sane.

As a famous man once said, "Smart plus strong plus quick equals badass." That image was reinforced by the storage deck unit loaded with a dozen weapons he carried - all registered and legal, of course, he wasn't a moron.

"Well," he boomed with a grin at the greeting party. His voice wasn't particularly deep, but there was a lot of lung behind it, and his words echoed around the station. "This is my favorite kind of greetin'!"

"We're not here for your amusement, Brick," snapped the station chief, a human who edged toward tall and lean. He didn't have a weapon in hand, instead keeping his arms folded behind his back. "You're marked."

"I damn well hope I am," Brick replied with a laugh. "Otherwise I'd be disappointed in myself!"

"We've got our eyes on you," the station chief said.

"Awesome, I'm gonna be on TV!" Brick replied with a growing smile. "I always work better with an audience!"

"You keep your guns holstered on the Citadel, Brick," the chief snarled. "I just need an excuse to kick you off the station!"

"Heh. I'd like to see you try," Brick grunted, the smile slowly fading. "Might be fun. Might not. I don't like shooting cops."

"Then don't cause trouble, understand?" the station chief said, eyes still stony.

Brick nodded. Both he and the chief knew what this conversation was really about. It was going to be impossible to prevent violence in an urban environment with as many people on it as the Citadel, and human presence only exacerbated the issue. But the station chief wanted to minimize the damage whenever a bounty hunter showed up, and Brick agreed with him. As much of a fan of mayhem as he was, he agreed that collateral should be avoided, so he would have to hold his fire on the Citadel.

"Understood," Brick said, and held up his hand in a placating gesture. "I'll keep it civil. And call you guys if I think it might become uncivil."

The station chief exhaled, obviously unhappy. But he obviously didn't want to try to arrest Brick, especially when he hadn't done anything beyond being Brick. Which, depending on the planet, would be enough to get him jailed and/or shot at - but those planets were the ones he didn't so much "land on" as he "assaulted."

"Okay, fine," the chief said. "Get out of here. I'd better not find you causing trouble, because my men _will _shoot to kill."

"If they didn't, it wouldn't be as fun," Brick replied with a cheerful grin. He picked up his baggage and SDU from the station's scanners and went on his way. He jauntily walked down the streets of the Ward, everyone giving him a wide berth, and began planning out this job. He'd do C-Sec a favor and make it quick, and keep the damage to minimum, just as promised.

Brick may have been a brutal savage who had beaten men to death with their own spines before, but he respected police. And he had one big rule: No collateral. Ever. The bloodlust and savage fury that came with his mutations were tempered by seeing too many innocents die. Too many children. Especially on Akuze.

But checking his fire wouldn't be hard. Not with this target. He just had to walk inside, pick a direction, and start shooting and/or punching. Those were his favorite kinds of jobs.

* * *

The C-Sec officers were no slouches at their jobs, but Maya had been dodging minders just as well-trained and a whole lot more diligent since she was a child growing up in the monasteries of the Order of the Impending Storm. The warrior-priests had kept strict tabs on her, or at least they tried. She'd learned how to slip them, and just as easily slipped her C-Sec minders before she ever got to the Presidium.

Once on the upper levels of the Citadel, where the important people lived and worked - bureaucrats, politicians, military, diplomats, scientists, white-collar criminals, and so on - she slipped among the crowds of the well-dressed and powerful. There were fewer humans up here compared with Zakera Ward, but less suspicion and wariness as well. Maya spent a few minutes admiring the scenery: the lush green plants from a dozen and more different planets, the flowing water in the endless lake running through the circular structure, the false sky drifting past on the Presidium "ceiling" that made her think for a moment that she really was back on a planet's surface.

But her objective called, and C-Sec was doubtless trying to find her to keep her safe, so the Siren kept moving. She worked her way through plazas and shopping areas toward a series of offices and high-class shops outside built across the lake from the main embassy complex for most of the Citadel member species. One of the offices was relatively small and unassuming, lacking even a nameplate on the sliding door. All it had was an address number. Maya tapped the glowing door panel, and it chimed once. A moment later the door slid open, revealing a small, spartan office consisting of Citadel-standard white walls, a bank of computer processors on the far wall, and a simple desk with a glowing terminal display. Behind the desk sat a volus, his narrow fingers clacking away at the haptic interface for the terminal.

"Ah, Miss Maya," the volus said, his voice cheerfully pedantic. Maya stepped inside and closed the door. "I worried that you might be late."

"Had to give the police the slip," she replied, and took a seat across from the rotund little alien.

"A wise decision, considering your heritage," the volus replied. Von paused, inhaling from his suit's breather, before continuing. "Your advance has cleared, and I have acquired some useful information."

"You mean your employer has the information," Maya replied, and the volus' head bobbed once. She didn't anticipate that Barla Von would have something as esoteric or broad-reaching as data connecting Sirens and the Eridians. He was a financier and had a close eye on diplomatic maneuverings on the Citadel, but wasn't an archaeologist or specialist in Eridian studies. But his employer _would _have that data.

"Indeed. The Shadow Broker appreciates your willingness to give him the Order's money," Barla Von said, and produced an OSD from a compartment in his desk. Maya nodded, holding out a hand for the disc.

"They weren't using it anymore," she replied, and the volus dropped the disc into her palm.

"As agreed, all of the details the recent excavation on Eden Prime," the volus said. He inhaled again. "It might interest you to know that you are not the only party on the Citadel with such an interest in the device."

"Not shocking," Maya replied, pocketing the OSD. Digistructing it would be safer, but it also ran the risk of the data being corrupted.

"No, but I suspect it would be worrying," Barla Von replied. Inhale. "The Broker wanted to make it clear that there has been a recent defection within the ranks, and that knowledge of this transaction has been leaked. The fact that you possess that information will spread, likely within seconds of you leaving this office."

"Great," Maya muttered. "It was getting boring here anyway."

"In particular I would advise you to be wary of a human named Fist," Barla Von added.

"Yeah, I've heard of him already," Maya said, standing.

"What you may not know,' the volus said, and paused to inhale again, "is that he was until very recently in the employ of the Shadow Broker. And as of late, he has taken an intense interest in the same subject that you have. Obsessive, almost."

Maya frowned. If that was the case, and if Barla Von's warnings were on the level, then Fist might try to grab the data. Not to mention that he might take a shot at Maya herself. The connection between Sirens and Eridian tech was not common knowledge, but anyone who worked for the Shadow Broker - and who had the kind of interest in the Eridians that Fist apparently did - would know about it.

She started to speak, but paused, and her brow furrowed as she started reading between the lines. Barla Von wouldn't let information like this slip freely without payment. And Fist recently leaving the Broker's employ meant more than he'd let on. Plus Von's warnings . . . ..

She looked back down at the unassuming little alien. He stared back at her, his breather hissing a couple of times. Maya then exhaled in understanding, folding her arms over her chest.

"Fist was the one who betrayed the Broker?" she asked. The volus nodded, and despite the body-concealing suit, there was an almost approving air to the gesture.

"Quite adept, I see," he replied. "Indeed. Fist has withheld very valuable data from the Broker, which has made the Broker exceedingly angry. Enough to hire assassins."

"And enough to let slip to a Siren that he has such information and might take a swing at me?" Maya asked, and Von waved a hand in an agreeable gesture while taking another breath.

"I can't say anything on that matter," he replied. "But if you were to seek out such data, and in the process be attacked by or attack Fist, thereby weakening his organization and making it more vulnerable to infiltration and data extraction by Broker agents, well, that would be beneficial, wouldn't you agree?"

"Right, and the Broker wouldn't have to pay me for the job, unlike his assassins," Maya said.

"Of course, any information you would acquire while fighting Fist would be very valuable to the Broker," Barla Von added. "Not to mention recompense for removing Fist."

"Look, you want me to kill Fist for you, you're not going to get it by offering to pay me," Maya replied with a frown. She'd made her living through violence since leaving the Order in shambles behind her, but Maya didn't take jobs from just anyone to kill just anybody. She may have been a mercenary, but she was an ethical one.

"I doubt that Fist is any sort of angel," Barla Von said. The translator made the dryness in his tone perfectly clear.

"No, and I won't lose any sleep taking him down, especially if he starts shooting first," Maya replied, and turned to leave. She paused at the door and glanced back over her shoulder. "If he does, and I do put him in his place, I expect the Broker would be happy and generous."

"Indeed," Barla Von said. "The Broker will be happy to repay you for violence, no matter the route your conscience demands you take to get the job done."

"This isn't a job," Maya replied with a frown. She opened the door and stepped outside. "I'm not working for the Broker."

"Indeed," Barla Von replied. "You are merely doing what he wants done, and then expecting payment for it."

Maya didn't respond to the volus' arid response, and let the door close behind her. She glanced around the gleaming white of the Presidium for a moment, and shook her head.

Fist was a big target right now, and he could have information that would be useful to her. And Barla Von was right: he wasn't an angel. But the idea of working for the Shadow Broker didn't sit well with Maya. She wasn't an assassin for hire and she wasn't going to go looking for trouble by picking a fight with some bandit king because he _might_ have data she wanted. Plus Barla Von hadn't made it clear if he really did have what she wanted, he'd only hinted at it. If she'd just jumped at the hints without thinking on it, she would have played right into his hands, which meant she would be doing the Broker's bidding anyway. Slippery little volus.

Maya shook her head and started down the white-tiled street. She had some contacts elsewhere she could use to verify the information the volus was hinting at. If Fist took a shot at her, or if she could confirm that Fist knew what she needed to know about the Eridian tech from Eden Prime and how it connected to Sirens, she'd happily pay him a visit. But until then, she'd keep the guns holstered.

* * *

Brick stopped outside the locked door, and a big, savage grin spread over his features.

The clinic was a relatively small place - the kind of place that tended to minor injuries like cuts, burns, broken limbs, unanticipated amputations, and so on. The kind of stuff that a qualified doctor with a steady supply of Insta-Health could tend to pretty easily. It was built into a suite high up on one of the commercial high-rises that made up the majority of every Ward's occupied space. A bright, cheery sign outside advertised that the clinic was set up to deal with any species, regardless of mutations.

The door was also closed, locked tight, and the clinic was marked as closed, despite the local hours being among the busiest of the day. Exactly like the thug he'd left in a bloody heap in an alley four levels down had told him it would be. Said thug was the most recent of a steady trail of batter lowlifes he'd been beating into a talkative state since he arrived while running down his quarry, and the last scumbag had told him said quarry was sending a few of his best men to have a chat with on Cloe Michel, M.D.

So Brick did what anyone with said information would do when confronted with a locked door.

He knocked. Politely.

Several seconds passed, and he knocked again. He looked up at the camera pointing down at him from above the clinic door, smiled, and waved. Then he fired up his omnitool, waved it over the locked door, and triggered an automated hacking program. Brick was not technologically adept, but he had enough money that he could buy software to make up for that shortcoming. The hacking tool worked within seconds, unlocking the door, and he cracked his knuckles.

The C-Sec station chief had asked him to limit the damage, so when the door opened, he went in with all his weapons still locked in digistruct space. His fists were more than enough.

There was a small waiting area with a long receptionist's counter beyond, and a clinic area with beds screened off by privacy dividers and mass effect field generators beyond. Four men stood inside, two in the anteroom and two in the clinic, all armed with pistols and wearing red ballistic weave shirts and black trousers. All but one were baselines, and the last was a tremendous bruiser standing over two meters tall, his shirt bulging over enough muscles to flip an aircar. Hell, the big bruiser was nearly buff enough to rival Brick - "nearly" being the key word. In the middle of the gang of thugs was a small baseline human woman with bright red hair, a doctor's scrubs, and a screaming buzzsaw axe that was currently tearing into one thug's jugular.

Brick stopped in mid-step, blinking in surprise as the small woman pulled the spinning, diamond-edged buzzsaw free, its edges glowing yellow-hot, and whirled on another thug. He jumped back as she howled and cursed in what sounded like heavily-accented French.

Then Brick charged, pounding across the room toward the nearest goon while hauling back with one massive fist, fingers clenched tight enough that the straining tendons cracked like broken wood, and drove his arm into the middle of the thug's back. Something broke - Brick guessed it was the thug's everything - and he went flying through the air over the counter to smack into the bruiser who was backing away from the screaming doctor. The huge human stumbled, and then let out a deep, pained howl as Doctor Michel chopped her buzz-axe into the meat of his upper arm.

The last thug spun toward Brick, pointing his pistol at him, which just gave the massive slab of humanity an easy target to grab. He slapped his hand down over the top of the pistol and wrenched, and the baseline's wrist broke. He let out a high-pitched squeal, which redoubled when Brick grabbed his forearm and snapped that as well. Then Brick grabbed the screaming thug by the leg, wrenched him up into the air like a whip, and beat him on the floor hard enough to smash ribs and break his back.

He spun toward the wounded bruiser, who tried to backhand Michel as she tore the buzz-axe free. She stumbled back, and the blow hit her hard in one shoulder. Enraged or not, the impact knocked the small baseline off her feet.

It also cleared the line of sight between Brick and the bruiser, and the former hefted the latter's broken comrade and chucked him end over end into the bruiser's face. The huge thug was knocked over backward by the impact, hitting shelves with his flailing arms and scattering medical equipment all over the floor.

Brick hopped over the prone doctor. His first instinct was to grab her and pull her to safety, but after seeing her with that buzz-axe, he opted for caution, and instead closed to grappling range with the bruiser. He slammed his shoulder into the hefty mutant human as he rose, knocking him off his feet, and the bruiser struck the floor again with a shout of surprise. Brick leapt atop him, driving a knee into the mutant's sternum, and then rained punches until he heard crunches and the last thug went still.

Job done, Brick hopped onto his feet and looked around for something to clean up the blood on his knuckles. Bad guys lay scattered around the clinic in various states of broken, and Michel was pushing herself to her feet and wiping blood from her lip. Her eyes fixed on Brick, and she clutched her buzz-axe tightly.

"Whoa, relax, Doc," he said, holding up his hands. "Name's Brick. I came here to save your ass."

She stared at him for a few moments, and her eyes then flicked around the clinic. Finally, she lowered the buzz-axe.

"Thank you, Mister Brick," she breathed, setting the weapon aside. Her accent was a thick French, going by Brick's autotranslator, and that just made the "Mister" sound even weirder to his ears.

"Just Brick, ma'am," the slab of muscle replied. He glanced around, and found a chair, which he hefted. He led her out into the anteroom and set the chair down, and she tookt he offered. Brick fetched her a glass of water and waited for her to stop trembling.

"You okay, Doctor?" he asked, leaning against the wall with his arms folded. She nodded. Brick considered how he was going to get what he needed out of the shaken doctor now that the crisis had passed, and decided to play the wandering hero card. It worked in the past.

"Heard someone sent those men to shake you down over something or other, so I came to check it out," Brick said after she'd recovered. "Guess you can call the police now, if you wanted to, but I got no idea what they wanted."

"They were sent by Fist," Michel said almost immediately.

"The crime boss?" Brick feigned ignorance. He didn't know how she'd react if he told her that part of his job was to fatally rearrange Fist's organs. Maybe positive, maybe not.

"Yes," Michel said with a nod. "They were sent to keep me quiet. I think they were going to kill me, or hurt me, or-"

"So you grabbed the axe and started swinging," Brick said with approval. Michel nodded and took another drink of water. "What were they trying to hide?"

"The quarian," Michel said, and Brick leaned forward a bit. "She came into the clinic last night. She had been wounded. Shot. Said that assassins were after her. Said that she had information that needed to get back to the Migrant Fleet. I guess it must have been too sensitive to transmit."

"She say what it was about?" he asked, trying to hide his interest. After all, half his mission was to kill Fist. The other half was to find out why he'd betrayed the people who he worked for in the first place.

"A Vault," Michel whispered, and Brick stood up off the wall, eyebrows rising in surprise.

"Go on."

* * *

Maya had been expecting trouble when she went down to Zakera Ward to check up with her contacts. Barla Von's warning was foremost in her mind, so when the elevator from the docking ring connecting the Presidium to the Ward reached one of the promenade streets, she stepped off warily and prepared to disappear into the crowds to avoid the expected prying eyes.

What she hadn't been expecting was Fist's goons jumping her three steps off the elevator.

As she'd stepped out into the street, Maya's instincts had immediately started screaming at her. Her brain caught up a step later, noting that the usual crowds of sapient life that she'd noted before had vanished, leaving the street oddly empty.

At the third step, she'd started drawing a submachinegun from her SDU, and as it materialized in her hands, Fist's men opened fire with a shuddering storm of metal and noise.

The street was the standard promenade in the Wards: a long, wide corridor built into one of the many tall buildings along the interior of the Ward, constructed of the dull gray metal that was ubiquitous down here, with a darkened service area about five meters above with catwalks and maintenance tunnels running parallel to the street. Shops lined either side of the corridor, bright holographic lights and signs identifying them, but many had their doors sealed and the crash glass of their windows were covered with armored anti-theft shutters. Cylindrical advertising kiosks, automated public-use terminals, and benches split the corridor down the middle. Garish holographic advertisements and video displays lit up the entire corridor in a dazzling display of light.

And there were also the jackasses shooting at her.

The blazing gunfire of a dozen weapons coming from multiple directions and converging on the startled Siren just added to the riot of light. Men in plainclothes ballistic weave, some of normal build but others clearly too tall or thin or heavily-muscled to be baseline humans were shooting at her from open doorways in both directions on the street. She could hear the thugs shouting and cheering and cursing with a furious, manic glee that was all too familiar in the borderlands. Rounds slammed into her shields with a fury that turned the barriers opaque, and Maya knew she had only a couple of seconds before they fell and she was turned into hamburger.

So she charged.

And as the adrenaline shot through her and she vaulted over a bench, bullets whipping past her from all directions, Maya grinned. He arm came up, gesturing toward one of the doorways where Fist's men were crouched, and the Eridian markings etched across half her body erupted with azure fire as she initiated a phaselock.

There were two men in the doorway she was charging, both baseline humans, and both with expressions that shifted from manic glee to sudden terror right before reality rewrote itself and one man was yanked off his feet. Dark energy rippled around the bandit in a roaring sphere of searing heat and crushing force. Piercing screams of helpless agony erupted from the thug as his skin and clothing burst into flames. The second man was yanked off his feet by the force of the sphere's formation and was thrown toward and past his companion, bouncing off the doorframe and tumbling into the street.

Maya landed a couple of steps away from the prone man, and fired into him while charging the door and the roasting man inside. Rounds smashed into his shields and punched through, half a dozen shredding his torso and arms as she ran past. The heat rolling off the trapped, screaming thug in the doorway washed over Maya, but she barely felt it; whatever gave her the ability to trap people in miniature crushing hell-singularities also protected her from the effects of the same. She ducked behind the doorframe, bullets whipping past her and ricocheting off the metal. As she crouched behind cover, there was a _snap_ of released air, and the crushing singularity collapsed. A charred, mangled corpse toppled to the floor beside her.

_Okay, _she thought. _I've got cover. Now, I need to either get clear of this ambush or kill enough of them to make them retreat._

She glanced around the interior of the shop. She guessed it was some kind of furniture store, as holographic displays showed various chairs and couches and tables and such, some familiar and human while others were of elegant or twisty alien designs. There was a back door to the shop.

Fist's goons closed in outside, pouring suppressing fire into the doorway, and the decision wasn't a difficult one. Maya rose and ran toward the door, slapping the control. The door slid open, and Maya ran into the service corridor beyond.

Or at least, she started too, but a looming shadow not a meter in front of her aborted that plan. Maya skipped backward right as a massive slab of muscle brought the butt of a shotgun down where he head had been a heartbeat ago. The shotgun hit the floor so hard that the stock broke off and the metal plates dented. She snapped the submachinegun up and opened fire as she dove aside, but the rounds smashed off the thug's shield to no effect. The bruiser lumbered after her, snarling and laughing, moving with the kind of ponderous strength and mass that could stop a charging krogan.

"No getting away from us!" he boomed, leveling the shotgun at her. He didn't have a perfect shot, but the deafening roar of the shotgun filled the room, and the hypervelocity slugs smashed into Maya's shield and collapsed it. The shotgun pumped again, and he swung it to bear on Maya.

"Quiet," she hissed as the shotgun's action clicked, and blue fire swept over her left side once more. The phenomenal cosmic power surging through her beat him to the shot, and fire and crushing force swept over the immense bruiser. He was lifted up and back, screaming, and Maya bolted past him.

She didn't have more than a moment; the second phaselock wouldn't hold for long. Even as she reached the door behind the bruiser, she could feel it collapsing, and heard the huge thug hit the floor behind her.

"Goddamn little witch!" the bruiser snarled. "That hurt!"

Maya glanced both ways in the hallway behind the shop, and picked a direction. She ran to the left. She made it a dozen strides before a door ahead burst open and another thug burst into the hallway. He was a baseline human armed with a shotgun, and he pivoted toward her, bringing the weapon to bear. Maya was already firing as he spun, and blood and mangled gore erupted from his back before he got the chance to fire.

She nearly leapt over his corpse, but a flicker of insight instead sent her through the door he'd emerged from, right before a torrent of gunfire cut through the hallway from the bruiser chasing her. Maya entered the shop beyond and let out a yelp when she slammed into another of Fist's thugs. He was a big and muscular baseline, and his arms shot up in a bear hug intended to trap and pin her in place. He had the mass and muscle to make it work, if she had been an ordinary human.

Maya clapped her off hand over his face as he tried to grab her, and sent a pulse of her immense reservoir of power through her arm. It surged through her fingertips into the thug's face and burst out the other side, blasting his skull to charred ribbons.

She bounded around the collapsing body and out into the street beyond. Most of Fist's thugs were running toward the shop she'd ducked into just a few moments ago, and only a couple spotted her as she emerged. She put a dozen rounds through one of the latter as he turned to fire at her, and then dove behind an advertising kiosk as the rest whirled toward her. Bullets bounced off the kiosk's overengineered frame, and she silently thanked the madness of whoever made the things bulletproof.

Maya didn't stay put. She waited barely a heartbeat before bolting back out of cover, firing on the run with her right hand while sending more tingling power through her left. She picked out one of the thugs - a hulking brute toting an assault rifle who was barking orders to the rest of the group - and seized him in another phaselock. The crushing heat closed around him, and he started screaming, though more in anger and outrage than pain. Maya advanced, firing and ducking into and out of cover, cutting down another of Fist's gunmen as they scrambled for cover.

She didn't give them a chance to recover, constantly moving and shooting and dropping them one by one, with the huge thug commanding them falling first. Now that she was out of the ambush, Maya had the edge, even against an enemy that outnumbered her greatly. For all their numbers, Fist's men were just thugs with guns. Maya had been trained to fight since she could walk; if there was one good thing about her life under the Order of the Impending Storm, it had been the intense combat training and all the versatile applications thereof.

She heard a barely articulate howl of pain and fury, and spun to see the massive form of the bruiser come pounding out of one of the shops, his skin charred and red in many places. He turned toward her, raising his shotgun, and she snapped her weapon up to target him in turn.

Then his head exploded.

The echo of a rifle shot bounced around the street, and Fist's men froze.

That made the next couple of shots even easier for the unseen sniper, and Fist's men began to panic, searching for the source of the shots or scrambling for new cover.

Maya didn't give them the chance. Between the Siren and the unseen sniper, the few remaining bandits stood no chance. They died quickly but not cleanly, more than one set ablaze and crushed to a pulp by her phaselock powers, and others were pulped by precision fire from the marksman.

The last of the enemy fell or fled, and Maya reloaded her submachinegun. She could distantly hear the sirens of C-Sec units approaching, and slowly emerged from cover, scanning for the shooter. She spotted movement above, in the maintenance area above, and a moment later an armored form dropped down from the walkways. Maya recognized the distinct, slender form of a turian. He wore black armor and carried a marksman carbine along with a small arsenal on his back. His face was shielded by a helmet.

"Are you injured?" he asked in that distinct, flanged, metallic voice of the turian species.

"No, I'm fine" she replied. She glanced to the corpses. "Thanks for the help."

"You're welcome," the turian replied. "I apologize for taking so long to catch up. You are hard to follow at times."

"Not a problem," Maya replied. "Would have preferred you showed up earlier, but I'm not upset with results." She frowned. "You know who I am?"

"Yes. Maya. Human Siren, second identified of current generation." He paused, mandibles clicking, and then reached up to remove his helmet. Maya saw an avian face with dark red skin covered with flowing white tribal markings and bright green eyes.

"My apology. I should introduce myself. Nihlus Kryik, Special Tactics and Recon."

* * *

Doctor Michel was forthcoming, and what she said got Brick's blood pumping, in both anger and anticipation. As far as as the good axe-swinging Doctor was aware, Fist still had the quarian, who still had the information on Eridian tech and this Vault.

Eridian Vaults. Those things were legendary. Stories from translated Eridian script hinted that they were the storehouses for all kinds of things: Alien technology. Infinite wealth. The secrets behind element zero and digistruct technology and whatever the mysterious power source that Eridian technology drew from. Whoever could find and unlock a Vault would be rich beyond their wildest dreams.

Brick doubted the stories were true, but even a chance at that kind of wealth couldn't be passed up. Plus, going by Fist's reputation, Brick wasn't sure if the quarian was still alive. Maybe he'd killed her and taken the data. Maybe he was beating it out of her.

Brick clenched his fists as he strode through the back alleys to Fist's hideout, a sleazy strip club called Chora's Den. Maybe, just maybe, Brick was going to go in there and kill Fist with his bare hands.

The Den's entrance was located on a balcony overlooking an interior aircar route, the kind that ran between many of the buildings in the Ward. Cars shot past periodically below. Brick crossed a narrow walkway that spanned the gap between either side of the road. On the far end of the walkway was the entrance to Chora's Den, highlighted with a glowing hologram of a reclining asari.

Brick paused and checked the weapons in his SDU, and picked a big, heavy shotgun of Jakobs manufacture. He materialized it, and hefted the solid, powerful weight of the weapon. A shotgun made by Jakobs could drop a Thresher Maw. If a human was hit by one, they'd need a good air filter to clean up the mess. He grinned and started toward the door.

"Alright," he said to himself, "time to be a big, goddamn he-"

The door to Chora's Den exploded in a roar of sound and fire and fury, knocking Brick onto his ass.

Out the door leapt a skag the size of a small aircar, covered in armored hide. Or at least, Brick thought it was a skag, with the tripartate mouth, gleaming white eyes, and massively-built upper body. He realized a moment later that it wasn't organic: it was a machine, with a set of mechanical jaws, synthetic muscles beneath titanium and ceramic plates, and extremely sharp metal claws. Electricity sparked between the titanium teeth in the jaws, and four heavy cannons sprouted from the mech's shoulders.

And standing on the skag-mech's back, holding on to one of its metal ridges with one hand and firing a shotgun into the burning ruins of Chora's Den with the other, was a quarian.

"Go, Chitikka!" she shouted, pumping the shotgun one handed. "Get us out of here!"

The skag-mech roared and warbling, static-filled mechanical howl, and leapt clear over Brick's still-sitting form. A moment later several men, wearing the same kind of ballistic weave as the goons Brick had smashed earlier, came charging out of the Den with weapons in hand and ran past him after the quarian.

He blinked a couple of times at what he'd just witnessed, and then broke out into a wide grin.

"I don't know who that quarian girl is," he said, clambering to his feet. "But I like her!"

* * *

_**Codex - Megacorporations - Atlas**_

_The Atlas Corporation is one of the largest and most powerful corporations in the galaxy. With offices and holdings spread across Citadel space and the Terminus, Atlas manufactures a vast range of products, but their most profitable enterprise the creation of powerful and expensive weaponry of all types: personal, vehicle, aircraft, and space-based. The Atlas Corporation claims that its technological edge granted by a vast, innovative staff of scientists and engineers are responsible for their high-quality armaments. Other corporations and detractors instead accuse Atlas of reverse-engineering Eridian technology to give them their edge._

_Atlas maintains overt control of a number of worlds in the borderlands and Terminus Systems, which are used as mining bases, research facilities, or factories. Atlas also maintains a tight grip on several worlds of relatively little value save for suspected Eridian ruins. Atlas has also openly attacked groups in the Terminus to take control of suspected Eridian artifacts and technology, and has a very high standing bounty on all Sirens._

_Atlas' primary military element is the Crimson Lance, a disciplined and elite force of soldiers recruited for life and outfitted with advanced weaponry. Lance troops are often recruited from criminals, bandit populations, and mercenary forces, and are subjected to harsh training and intense discipline. Lance membership is for life, and anyone who disobeys orders or attempts to leave the Lance is marked for immediate execution. Lance soldiers maintain Atlas' control over the many worlds fueling it with resources and manufactured goods, as well as defending Eridian ruins from rival corporations and seizing Eridian technology with brutal and ruthless force._

* * *

_**Author's Notes:** _The shift in characters and location here was deliberate. There's a lot of characters to juggle in the story, as I'm essentially trying to bounce back and forth between Mass Effect's immense cast and the smaller but no less diverse cast of Borderlands. That being said, this chapter was a lot of fun to write, though I'm not quite as good with Maya and Brick as I am with Roland and Lilith.

Also, if you were expecting Garrus instead of Nihlus, don't worry. Garrus will show up later on.

Until next chapter . . . .


	5. Chapter 5: Glorious Fisting

_Five years ago..._

Mindoir burned.

That kind of pissed Charn off. The batarian pirate captain had plied his particular trade for a long time across a lot of worlds, and he had always held by the old mercenary's adage: Pillage first, _then_ burn. But _nooooo_, they had to open this raid with an orbital bombardment, because they weren't sure if this was a baseline human colony or a colony filled with those abhumans. Like it was impossible for someone to do _recon_ before they launched a raid.

Charn shook his head as he and his troops moved through the colony. Smoke rose from burning colonial homesteads and the prefab stacks of housing and industrial units. Bodies littered the streets, and every corpse annoyed Charn further. After all, corpses weren't profitable on slave runs, and the other pirate captains had either let them choke in the smoke or shot them dead. At this rate they'd make only a meager profit.

Charn's group _had_ managed to haul quite a few humans from the remains of the houses as they marched across the colony. They'd had to wound a few of the crazier ones, and thankfully they'd run into almost no abhumans, save some with grossly enhanced musculature who'd taken quite a few hits with both guns and stunners to bring down. Those alone might bring in enough to offset expenses, but he'd have to keep them in his own pens, lest one of the morons in this fleet try to poach.

The pirates spread out as they got deeper into the colony, wary for defenders, but Charn doubted there would be many. Those who had shot back were put down quickly, but by now his forces were getting spread thin as more than half his crew were tasked with collaring, and escorting captives back to the pens and guarding the new stock. Charn blotted out the screams and cries from the prisoners; he took no pleasure in it, unlike some of his men. This was just business, after all.

He spotted movement ahead, down the street of this pre-fab stack, and raised his rifle. Something small and quick; either a child or an abhuman rat or midget. He had to be careful, as any of them could have been dangerous. He waved the squad forward, and they moved down the street, firelight flickering in their helmet visors. The smoke drifting past was hot enough to blur thermals.

They reached the spot where the human had gone, and Charn grunted. The human had run inside a storage unit. The air was mostly clear. Good; it make hunting the runt down easier.

"Check fire," he ordered. "Identify it before you shoot. If it's a baseline, stun it. If its a midget, just kill the damn thing." He'd tried selling human midgets before, but the things were worse than feral skags or varren, except these ferals could use shotguns. No one wanted to buy the little bastards.

They fanned out throughout the storage unit, checking around the crates and boxes. Charn moved slowly, carefully, finger tight on the trigger. He hoped it wasn't a midget; he didn't want his last sight to be a tiny, screaming human ripping his throat out with a boxcutter or something equally demeaning.

Charn rounded a corner, and spotted movement. A small figure ducking behind some crates. He tensed for a heartbeat, but then calmed as he realized the proportions on the human were correct for a child, not a midget. Also, the midget would likely have leapt onto his face and tried to crack his skull open instead of hiding. The pirate advanced, stepped around the crates, and leveled his weapon.

The human child screamed and huddled between the crates. Small, perhaps less than eight years old, female, blonde, pale-skinned. She tried to hide, pressing back against the wall between the boxes, covering her face with her arms.

Charn grunted and raised his stunner. It would be easier for everyone if the child was unconscious for the process.

"_Hola, pendejos."_

The low, gravelly voice was distinctly human, quietly amused, and . . . _hungry_. At least, that was how the translator in Charn's ear interpreted it. He spun away from the child and back toward the entrance to the storage unit.

Silhouetted in the firelight from outside was a squat, muscled form wearing ragged, bullet-riddled colonist's fatigues. In the flickering light, Charn could see a tremendous beard and mohawk.

And in either hand the human was hefting a pair of heavy, Vladof-built machineguns with rotary barrels.

Charn raised his rifle, as did the pirates around him, but before he could shout any orders, his voice was drowned out by a tremendous, laughing roar.

"_**ESTE ES MI **_**BOOMSTICK!**_**"**_

Then the world was bullets and muzzle flash.

The pirate raid on Mindoir came to a halt over the next twenty minutes. It was not a slow, grinding halt brought about by attrition, or a sporadic, jerking halt brought about by infighting, or even the panicked, terrified halt brought about by Alliance reinforcements.

It was the halt that came when a toy race car slammed headlong into a mack truck.

"_**BIENVENIDOS A LA FIESTA, PUTAS!"**_

Batarian pirates stood and fought, but they faced an avalanche of hypervelocity rounds.

"_**WELCOME TO MINDOIR!"**_

A swath of violence, bullets, and terrifying aromas was ripped through the pirates as the squad figure advanced behind a river of gunfire and profanity, leaving rent and splattered bodies in his wake.

"_**RAAAAAAGHABBLERARAGHAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!"**_

Pirates screamed and panicked and fled and died amidst the laughter of a thirsty, hairy dwarf.

"_**GARBAGE DAY!"**_

The pirates retreated, their pilots firing the thrusters of their landing craft, and many escaped without waiting to pick up survivors or any slave cargo. None wanted to risk letting this gun-toting berserker get onto their ship.

As the last ship lifted off, the remaining pirates, stranded on the colony, turned to desperately face the horror that approached, humming to himself, toting two guns, and with a feral, bloodthirsty grin on face.

"_Me llamo _Salvador_,"_ the gunzerker snarled, and the barrels began to spin. "You invaded my planet. Prepare to die."

The slavers' screams were buried under an avalanche of lead.

* * *

_**Chapter Five: Glorious Fisting**_

_Present Day_

Illium spun slowly beneath the Hyperion shuttle as Claptrap brought them down through the atmosphere toward the surface of the somewhat neutral gateway to the Terminus Systems. Lilith, Roland, and Kaidan crowded the cockpit around the the robot, watching through the forward viewports as they descended toward the asari planet. Their target was the city of Nos Astra, a plain of immense, elegant spires and glowing lights visible as evening fell on the city.

Lilith kept glancing to the sensor display, which showed the countless ships lifting from and descending toward the planet, with a particular eye toward a much, much larger vessel descending in their wake. The _SSV London_ had been waiting for them when they'd emerged from the mass relay into the system, and was making a point of following them down to the surface. Nos Astra traffic control had already cleared two berths for them at the main spaceport with little fuss; they clearly didn't want to get in the way of any official Alliance or Hyperion business.

There was a flare of light as they descended, coming from several kilometers away among the high-rising corporate sector of the city. Claptrap let out a squeal of surprise and the shuttle rocked a bit.

"Whoa, what the hell was that?" Lilith asked. Kaidan leaned over past her to look at the display.

"Big thermal bloom," he said. "You think one of the corporations is shooting it out down there?"

"Not even they would be stupid enough to start something that big on Illium," Lilith said. "That looked like it took out half a building, and-"

"It's the new Torgue-Urdnot headquarters," Roland grunted.

"Ooooooohhhhh," everyone else said at once. That explained quite a bit.

The descent was otherwise unremarkable, though the shape of the explosion from the Torgue-Urdnot headquarters drew some attention, and a few annoyingly-appreciative remarks from Claptrap when he realized where the exploding middle-finger was leveled.

They descended among the elegant silver mountains of the city, and passed into the valley that Nos Astra's main spaceport formed among the spires. The wide, low structure housed berths for thousands of ships ranging from military cruisers and superheavy transports to smaller shuttles, light freighters, and pleasure yachts. Claptrap eased them into the berth they were provided.

Or rather, he attempted to. A deep, shuddering screech ran through the shuttle as it mangled the docking clamps at their berth, and alarms howled from the console. Metal crunched and twisted, and the collection of mercenaries and Marines were sent tumbling to the deck. They lay there until the shuttle stopped shaking.

"Docking sequence complete," reported the shuttle's cheery VI voice. Lilith was fairly certain that it was deliberately designed to mock them.

"Whoops," Claptrap said once the shuttle came to a complete halt.

"Alright," Roland grunted once the myriad complaints ended and everyone got back to their feet. "Let's get this exchange over with, alright?"

"Yeah," Lilith agreed. "The sooner we're off anything flown by Claptrap, the better."

"Hey, I think I did pretty well," the robot replied as he puttered down the ramp to the cargo bay. "Considering I've never flown anything at all since I was built."

The battered collection of marines, mercs and machinery stepped through the docking collar and walkway that extended to their wounded shuttle and back into non-canned air, the dizzying whirlwind of spaceport sound and aromas hitting them the moment they emerged. The roar of engines of various sizes mixed with the din of voices from the interior of the spaceport visible through doorways leading deeper into the building.

A deep, pounding roar sounded overhead, and they all looked up to see the narrow, blade-shaped bulk of the _SSV London_ descending into its own berth, far more gracefully than Claptrap's not-quite-crash. Roland turned his eyes away from the landing warship, and found Lilith glancing across the dock with narrow, wary eyes.

"Something wrong?" Roland asked, doing the same. Lilith shrugged.

"It's Illium," she said. "Pays to be suspicious, especially anywhere that Maliwan and Hyperion have this much power."

"Right," he agreed. He'd heard the stories of this place. Anywhere that the corporations had this much power was a place to be wary, neutral or not. He looked back to the remains of his squad. "I agree. Keep an eye open. This isn't safe or cozy like Earth, or the Citadel."

* * *

Meanwhile, in the middle of the Citadel's Zakera Ward, a quarian shoved a shotgun almost all the way down a bandit's throat and blew his head apart.

Brick found his opinion of her growing with each passing second.

She pumped the shotgun - a modified Hyperion digistruct weapon, apparently rebuilt with a larger magazine and aftermarket aiming module - and the mecha-skag she was riding whirled in place. Its jaw opened, and a barrage of gunfire erupted from the shoulder cannons into a pair of bandits closing in from the pair's left. The lucky one caught only a couple of rounds and was blasted in half. The unlucky one caught half a dozen shots and was reduced to a tumbling cloud of bright red meat and a few bloody limbs.

They were in a rapidly-abandoned section of one of the upper levels of Zakera, outside an aircar hangar. The quarian girl had to have been headed there, and would have made it if one of Fist's bandits had not crashed a cargo hauler into the entrance and cut her off. The hauler had also been loaded with Fist's goons, who had leapt out and surrounded the quarian in the open high-rise street outside the hangar, with the only cover being those overengineered advertisement kiosks spread liberally around the street.

But neither quarian nor mecha-skag were going down without a fight, and more than half the bandits who'd been in the hauler were dead. Brick intended to make sure they had a clean sweep of the trash before Fist could send more backup.

He'd caught up with them by virtue of being huge and fast on his feet, but the fact that he'd found a quicker route through the Keepers' access tunnels overlooking the streets had helped him avoid the fleeing crowds. It also let him leap into the middle of the battlefield from overhead, delivering just the right amount of descending whoopass to make an impression. Brick slammed down onto the street right behind one of Fist's goons, and the bandit spun around just in time to have his face terminally rearranged by Brick's free hand. The other hand rose toward a bandit five meters away, leveled the Jakobs shotgun, and blew apart one of the bandit's arms and most of his chest.

"Surprise!" Brick shouted as he charged across the street toward another bandit. The man turned toward Brick and managed to let out a startled cry before a single massive fist launched him across the street. Another bandit a few meters away let out a shout of equal parts terror and fury, and his eezo-based submachinegun blazed, sending a river of hypervelocity rounds toward the hulking brute. Brick snarled, ignoring the grain-sized bullets smashing off his barriers, and blasted the bandit nearly in half with the shotgun's remaining shells.

In the middle of the street, the quarian crouched beside her mecha-skag, using it as cover. Bullets slammed into the skag's armored hide and bounced off, while it retaliated with lethal cannon fire. The quarian's shotgun boomed with multiple rapid-fire blasts. The bandits dove for whatever cover they could, and their fire shifted toward the new, tremendous arrival stomping across the street and blasting them to pieces. She didn't miss the abrupt swing the battle was taking.

"Chitikka, attack!" the quarian shouted over the gunfire, and the mecha-skag leapt away with a massive, grinding, industrial roar, lightning sparking between its jaws, and slammed straight through one of the kiosks several bandits were taking cover behind. The thugs started screaming and scattered as the massive four-legged mass of machine and mayhem tore into them, smashing and crunching and tearing.

Brick stomped around the perimeter the bandits had formed, blasting and punching and working his way toward the quarian one bloody, powder-fractured thug at a time. The mecha-skag kept the majority of the bandits busy in that way that only impending dismemberment could, and Brick saw a chance to move in toward the quarian while they were distracted with dying. He rushed toward her, reloading the Jakobs shotgun as he ran.

"Hey!" he called as he reached the quarian. "Quarian! You hurt-"

The quarian whirled toward him and pointed her shotgun at his face. She pulled the trigger, and the burst of buckshot tore into his barriers and dropped them to less than five percent power.

"Shit!" Brick yelped, ducking as blue light exploded over his face from the rounds shattering inches from his face. His free arm shot out and grabbed the barrel of the shotgun. Ignoring the heat boiling off the weapon, he wrenched it aside. Another shot howled from the weapon, passing over his shoulder, and Brick yanked the gun out of the quarian's hands.

"Listen-" he started, but a sudden burst of blue-while light appeared in the quarian girl's hands, and a pistol - one of those sleek, glowing Maliwan guns - digistructed in her fingers. She shouted something that didn't translate properly and the pistol rose toward Brick's face. He dropped the Jakobs shotgun and grabbed the pistol in a hand that dwarfed the petite little thing. The girl grunted as he yanked it out of her hands with a quick flick of his wrist and tossed it a couple of meters away.

"I'm not here to-" Another digistruct flash, another shout in her apostrophe-laden language, and she held a big, chrome-plated Vladof assault rifle. He grabbed that one as well, but she let go the moment his fingers touched it and whipped out a camo-pattern Dahl sniper rifle nearly as tall as she was. He grunted and kicked the barrel of the weapon, knocking it out of her hands before she got a good grip on the bulky weapon.

"Look, I'm here to help you-" Brick snarled, and found himself staring down the barrel of a rocket launcher as tall as he was. His head snapped forward, brow smacking into solid metal, and he knocked the weapon down enough that he could stomp on the barrel and pin the launcher's business end to the street.

"How many goddamned guns you got in there?" he demanded. "Can you stop trying to shoot me for a second and listen?"

He saw the glowing eyes behind the quarian's facemask blink as a thought managed to work through the terrified panic, and she hesitated to draw another gun from her SDU. Brick was about to continue talking, but he spotted a burst of movement behind the quarian.

"Gargle your spleen!" shouted the thug that leapt through the air behind the quarian, a spinning buzzsaw axe in hand. He was lean and shirtless, showing a body covered in scars and tattoos of various colors, and a gas mask hid the man's twisted, screaming face. Brick's eyes widened in surprise as the psychopath descended, then his fist lashed over the quarian's head and struck the lunatic in the middle of his stomach. Bones shattered, blood erupted over both quarian and berserker, and the psycho went spinning away into the air.

The quarian watched the psycho land in a boneless heap on the street five meters away, and she turned back toward Brick. The light on the front of her helmet where her mouth was glowing steadily, indicating a slack jaw.

"You're welcome," he replied with a grin, but he turned, scanning the street. A screaming bandit flew through the air courtesy of the mecha-skag, but he heard the roar of more aircar engines. The narrow shapes and glowing engines of additional cars were descending toward the wrecked garage, and none of them were the flashing lights of C-Sec. He could already see more bandits moving through the streets on either side of their position.

"We're surrounded," the quarian girl's filtered voice murmured,a mix of worry and determination in her tone. She reached down and grabbed her dropped shotgun.

"Worse than that," Brick grunted. "They're sending psychos after us."

"That's bad, right?" she murmured.

"Yeah, pretty much," Brick replied with a shrug. It was an understatement. Human "psychos" were the unlucky bastards who lost their minds due to one flavor or another of mutation-induced insanity and were reduced to berserk, babbling lunatics. They were a lot more common on the borderlands and Terminus, where the lawless environment meant that they could survive among other mutants and outlaw savages. They didn't show up in civilized space much, because raving lunatics stabbing people with sharp implements and screaming about riding bicycles made of meat didn't mesh well with sane, civilized society.

The fact that Fist kept a gang of psychos around on the Citadel was worrying. But the fact that he'd gone so far as to point his human attack dogs at the quarian girl meant he wanted her so badly it override self-preservation instincts. A round of loose psychos on the Citadel was going to provoke one hell of a response from C-Sec.

Which meant that Fist was desperate. And powerful, desperate men were dangerous.

And thus, Brick grinned as he raised his shotgun. Aircars settled down on either side of the street, and Fist's men dismounted, taking cover behind them.

"What are you smiling about?" the quarian girl asked as the bandits circled around them, gun-toting thugs in ballistic weave and sunglasses crouching with rifles and submachineguns, psychos prowling with blades and pistols in hand, and here and there a towering, muscular bruiser stomping into position. It was a chaotic mishmash of tattooed lunatics, professional thugs, and abhuman brutes.

"Because this much trouble means whatever you've got is genuine," he replied. "Name's Brick, by the way."

"Tali," the quarian replied. "Tali'Zorah nar Rayya."

"Pleased to meet," Brick said. "So, why are these jackasses trying to kill you?"

"That's a long story," Tali said, her words slow and careful, as she watched the gathering bandits. "Fist wanted something I have. I refused. He took it poorly."

"Makes sense," Brick said with a grunt. "We get out of this, maybe I'll help you deal with Fist. Agreed?"

"Fine by me," she said, her voice quiet and small. And that pissed Brick off. He glared at the bandits as they prepared to attack.

The was a shout from one of the massive bruisers, and half a dozen psychos leapt out of cover on either side of them, screaming and waving their weapons, ranting about fire, hammocks, lungs, and other things. Gunfire erupted from both sides, whipping toward them in a torrent of multicolored violence, and bandits advanced to attack.

"Let's _**kick some ass!" **_he shouted, and his shotgun thundered.

* * *

Maya leaned against the hood her rented aircar, crossed her arms, and considered the Spectre before her. Nihlus Kyrik moved with a distracted attentiveness, sweeping the garage with his omnitool and glancing around with quick, avian jerks of his head and bright green eyes, hunting for threats. Yet, despite the turian's activity, he spoke with focus and purpose.

"We appear to be secure here, for the moment," he said, the flanged voice clear and stiff, as though he were talking to the Citadel Council themselves. "Some of those humans must have escaped, however. They will report back soon."

"I didn't think the bandits operated so openly on the Citadel," Maya said, and Nihlus shook his head in a quick, sharp motion. It looked like an acquired gesture, likely picked up from humans or asari.

"This is not the borderlands," he said, his tone pensive. "Normally they are more discreet, and do not send entire platoons into marketplace sectors. Something has changed."

"Something other than a Siren coming to the Citadel?" Maya asked, raising an eyebrow.

"A Siren is a prize, but not worth the kind of exposure this attack will bring," the turian replied. His eyes flicked down to his omnitool for a moment. "This crime boss, Fist, has been making power grabs across the Citadel in recent weeks - a string of murders, assaults, and thefts that have been drawing attention. Including mine."

"And you saw a large movement of his men, followed them, and found me," Maya concluded, and Nihlus bobbed his head in agreement. The Siren frowned. Captain Bailey had indicated Fist was trouble, but not so insane as to draw down a Citadel Spectre on his head. Then again, he'd just taken a shot at a Siren too. Was what he wanted worth earning those kinds of enemies?

"Any idea what he's after?" she asked, and the Spectre looked up at her. His eyes and the painted cartilage mask that was his face were unreadable, and he spent a couple of seconds regarding the Siren, clearly considering his words.

Of course, she knew what he was after. Barla Von had already warned her.

"Eridian technology," Nihlus finally said. "He has made inquiries and launched several heists regarding Eridian artifacts and research information, in addition to more typical underworld power plays."

"Why would a crime lord care about Eridian technology?" Maya asked, only partially feigning confusion. After all, someone like Fist might make a lot of money selling the tech, but he wouldn't have the resources to use the materials, and the money he would make off of the technology wouldn't be worth the heat from his new enemies. She may have known _what_ he wanted but not _why._ Yet, at least.

"Because he is in the employ of another party," Nihlus mused, his mandibles spreading and then clicking together. "He has already betrayed his former employer-"

"The Shadow Broker, yeah, I know," Maya replied, and Nihlus bobbed his again, apparently satisfied he wouldn't have to handle any more exposition. Maya exhaled, putting the pieces together.

"That was why he attacked me," Maya said. "I have data regarding the excavation of the device on Eden Prime. You know the one I'm talking about, right?"

Nihlus bobbed his head again, and despite his mask-like visage, she could see the thoughtfulness in his eyes.

"The device that disappeared during the attack on Eden Prime," he replied, mandibles tight against his jaw. The wheels spun in Maya's head as she put more pieces together.

"Fist making a huge power grab for Eridian tech," she said slowly, clicking together the evidence, "at the same time as a major attack on an Alliance colony over an Eridian device. Not a coincidence."

"Even if it is, I need to question him," Nihlus said, a sudden hardness in his voice.

"_We_ need to question him," Maya replied, and the Spectre hesitated for just a heartbeat before another head-bob. "He already took a shot at me once today. I'd rather not let him think he can get away with it."

"Acceptable," Nihlus replied, and gestured toward her rental car. "You will follow my lead." It wasn't a request or even an order - just a stark truth. She nodded.

"Fine by me," Maya replied, opening the car door. As she settled into the driver's seat, Nihlus strode around the vehicle. His omnitool lit up, and he glanced down. He froze for a single step, them quickly flipped up the passenger door and sat down.

"There has been a disturbance in Zakera Ward, near Chora's Den."

"Never heard of it," Maya said.

"Fist's preferred base of operations." Nihlus stared at his omnitool as Maya started the car and ran through the pre-lift cycle. "Something is happening there."

"Care to elaborate?" she asked.

"Corpses, fire, explosions. What one would expect at a disturbance in a human Ward," he said. The car began to lift. "We will have to hurry if we're to find anything useful in the wreckage."

Maya nodded and gunned the engine, and they shot off into the perpetual twilight of the Wards.

* * *

When faced with a large number of well-armed enemies, most men would take cover and fight from safety, using fire-and-maneuver to assault and flank the enemy. That was what sane people did.

Brick was pounding _toward_ the enemy instead of away, and Tali, despite her better judgment, was right behind him, covering his back.

He wasn't sure if Fist's bandits expected that. They certainly didn't act like they did - save the psychos, who leapt at the charging slab of muscle and shotgun with gleeful, nonsensical shouts and swinging blades.

"I'll slurp a coffee mixed from your souls and my pain!" one of the psychos screamed, right before Brick punched him across the street, landing in a jellied heap. Another chopped at his flank with a rusty, jagged blade that looked like it had been made from junkyard scrap, and the weapon cut into his shield. The barrier's charge dropped, but it held.

Tali shot the psycho in the gut, nearly blasting him in half and showering everybody in blood. She pumped the Hyperion weapon and pivoted, firing another blast at one of the baseline human thugs trying to flank them as Brick avalanched his way toward them. She saw barriers collapse and blood fly, but the bandit dove for cover while screaming in pain. Bullets ripped toward them from a dozen weapons directly ahead, but most deflected off their shields, and nothing came from behind them.

Chitikka made sure of that, in a way only a war machine built and programmed around the behavioral processes of an angry skag could manage. Mangled bodies flew through the air or were blasted apart by the robot's cannons as it charged among the bandits on the far side of the street, keeping their attention wholly locked on it and giving Tali and her unexpected ally a chance to charge the remaining thugs.

Which was still a _completely insane_ tactic, she was convinced.

_Humans._

"Might wanna get a step back," Brick snarled, and Tali thought she heard an edge of pleasure in his tone, He shoved his own shotgun into the face of the last remaining psycho and dlew his head to vapor, before dropping the weapon.

And Brick roared with such savage volume that his voice shook her bones, and _then_ he truly _charged_.

It wasn't just a stomping, thundering advance, it was a screaming avalanche of meat and promised violence. The rampaging slab of muscle and lunacy that was her ally closed on the nearest car the bandits were taking cover behind. Fist's men let out shouts of fear and panic, but they were drowned out by a tremendous roar filled with random consonants, and Brick kicked the car with one huge leg. With horrific clash of metal and ceramic, the aircar flipped over on its side, and Brick hauled back one arm and _punched _it straight into the bandits, A solid ton of metal, plastic, and crash-glass smashed into the trio of bandits and carried them back into the wall of one of the shops several meters away, and a burst of expanding blood erupted from beneath the vehicle, accompanied by the screech and crash of the aircar.

"**MORE."**

That one word from Brick sent several of the nearest bandits fleeing in terror, but a human nearly as huge as Brick answered the challenge with a shout of his own and advanced, leveling a shotgun at Brick. The weapon roared, firing a volley of projectiles that ignited in mid-flight and screamed toward the berserker like rockets. They slammed into Brick's shield and collapsed it. Blood flew, and Brick staggered.

Then he laughed.

And the shield detonated in a tremendous blast of concussive force that blazed out, hurling shrapnel and debris and body parts in all directions and knocking Tali and the human bruiser on their butts.

"NOVA SHIELD, _**BITCH!**_" Brick thundered and he crashed into the sitting bruiser, one hand wrapping around the huge human's neck and lifting him over his head. Brick then choke-slammed the bruiser into the street so hard that Tali heard vertebrae shattering.

"_Keelah_," Tali swore quietly, equal parts amazed and horrified by the spectacle.

"**WHO WANTS **_**MORE**_**?"** the berserker screamed, starting toward the remaining bandits.

None of them did, as the remaining thugs simply threw their weapons down and started running in a well-advised state of berserker watched them running, panting for several seconds, before he started laughing.

"Pussies," Brick spat, grinning. He turned back toward Tali, who stared in amazement. "What, never seen a pissed off human before?"

"Not one so, ah," Tali said, fumbling for the words. "Not a human so . . . large."

Brick laughed again.

The rumble of aircar engines descended from overhead, and they both snapped their eyes up. Tali's HUD fed her data the moment her eyes locked on the trio of descending cars: model, known weak points, performance characteristics, passenger capacity. It also also highlighted items of interest, such as the rocket launcher poking out of one of the aircars' window.

Both quarian and berserker bolted, diving for cover behind other parked vehicles. The launcher spat out a trio of rockets a moment later - probably a Vladof design that shot multiple missiles per volley - that screamed down toward them. Tali managed to get the bulk of one of the aircars between herself and the unguided missiles, and a tremendous surge of noise and force shook the street. Shrapnel cut through the air, and she heard Brick snarl in pain a couple of meters away.

"Assholes," he grunted, and over the echoes of the detonation Tali could hear more gunfire and the roar of the engines as the aircars landed. A glance at her HUD showed reports from Chitikka's systems, and her blood went cold. The mecha-skag had taken a beating already, and her cannon ammunition was entirely depleted, but she was turning to face the new threats regardless.

Then the bandit with the missile launcher targeted the hulking, loyal machine and put three more missiles straight into her head.

"No, Chitikka!" Tali shouted, activating her control menu while the mecha-skag's systems reported multiple system failures. Not even her own engineering could compete with the kind of anti-armor firepower the bandits were bringing to bear. The mecha-skag leapt out of the cloud of smoke and fire and debris, trailing sparking wires and dangling components, and loosed a garbled, static-filled roar. Tali could see fluids leaking from crumpled panels, two of the cannons were warped to uselessness, and the jaws were locked open by damaged hydraulics.

"Retreat !" she commanded. Blue light swirled around the battered machine, components breaking down into glittering motes that vanished as the mecha-skag was broken down and phased into the digistruct space in Tali's own SDU.

"How long we got?" Brick grunted beside her.

"How long until what?" Tali asked.

"'Till that badass 'bot of yours fixes itself?" he asked.

"Hours, if I'm lucky! Chitikka's not a mass-produced turret like Dahl or Atlas uses!" Tali said. "She's much more complex! I can't just-"

"Right, okay, we're on our own," Brick said, poking his head out of cover as the bandits in the aircars fanned out. One of them toting the enormous rocket launcher that had mortally wounded Chitikka, hopped onto the top of one car. He was a tall, lean human who wore shoulderpads with flashing holographic lights and a gas mask covered in spikes. A large, flashing sign covered his crotch, gleaming with the words "SAFETY FIRST" in huge letters, according to her HUD's translator.

"Damn," she hissed, recognizing the lunatic human from what she'd seen inside Chora's Den. "That's Fist's second-in-command. They called him Nine-Toes."

"Why the hell would they call him that?" Brick asked.

"He's a charitable philanthropist who gives back to the community," Tali muttered, and Brick grunted a laugh.

"Give up the data, suit-stain!" shouted the bandit, hefting his rocket launcher. "And I'll kill you quick!"

"Suit . . . stain?" Brick muttered. "That's a new one."

"Do we have a plan?" Tali asked, mind racing. Brick shrugged.

"Punch 'em till they die from it?" he suggested.

"That's not a plan!" she muttered, glancing around the street for something they could use. They needed to at least reach cover. Nine-Toes couldn't risk blowing them to pieces with the launcher before he recovered the data, so-

"Running out of time, grinder!" Nine-Toes shouted. "This dog's getting hungry!" He leveled the launcher at their cover.

"Punching things has a fine history of successful conflict resolution, in my observation," Brick said.

"I can't throw cars with my bare hands," Tali hissed back. "And we won't survive a charge against that launcher."

"Says you," Brick grunted. He jabbed a meaty finger at his chest. "I think we've got a chance."

"Five!" Nine-Toes called, hungry glee in his words. "Four!"

"Alright, time to go punch him!" Brick said, cracking his knuckles. And to her horror, Tali couldn't find any other way out of the situation without Chitikka's help.

"Three!" Nine-Toes yelled.

Then he was on fire.

A roiling sphere of purple-tinged dark energy erupted around him, flames rolling off of it, and Nine-Toes was yanked off his feet. His bandits dove for cover at the unexpected attack, and then scrambled even faster as a barrage of gunfire rained down from above. Bullets tinged with the blue sparks of a shock-elemental weapon hammered the ground around them.

Another aircar screamed down from overhead, swooping toward the quarian and berserker. It landed with the heavy crash of a barely-controlled descent, and the driver-side doors flew open.

"Get inside!" shouted a turian sitting in the driver's seat, his face painted a deep red with white tribal markings. He waved furiously toward them, and neither Tali nor Brick hesitated, though Brick's expression shifted to disappointment as he ran toward the car. Tali scrambled toward the car, sudden hope lending speed to her legs.

The bandits began to return sporadic fire, fitful bursts of poorly-aimed bullets that deflected off the turian's vehicle. Nine-Toes screamed as the fire from the swirling energy around him burned his flesh, thrashing and shouting in pain and rage. Tali dove into the backseat of the car, with Brick right behind her, pausing only to scoop up his discarded shotgun.

"Stay down!" shouted the turian as he closed the door, and gunned the engine. The car jerked up into the air, bullets smashing against the metal frame. The vehicle swerved as it ascended, and the passenger door opened as it jerked to a halt two levels above the street.

Another human, a female clad in tight ballistic weaves with blue hair and strange skin markings running down the left side of her body, jumped into the passenger seat, a smoking Maliwan submachinegun in her hands.

"Get us out of here!" she shouted, pulling the door down, but the turian was already accelerating away as she spoke.

* * *

The silence in the aircar after all the noise and violence and gibbering about meat bicycles was rather jarring. Maya looked over their passengers as they flew, pointedly trying to ignore the damage to her rental after Nihlus had taken the driver's seat.

The quarian girl was shaking, likely withdrawal from adrenaline - or, well, whatever the quarians had for adrenaline. Otherwise she looked unharmed, though she gripped her shotgun in tight knuckles that only slowly relaxed. It took her a minute to put the weapon away into her SDU. The flickers of light highlighted the other, much more battered passenger. Maya wondered how much of the blood that was on the human bruiser's body was his own.

"You two injured?" Maya asked.

"Nah, I'm good," the bruiser said.

"No . . . no ruptures," the quarian girl said, slowly. She shivered once more and went still after taking some long breaths. "Thank you for the timely rescue," she added. "But who are you?"

"Nihlus Kyrik," the turian driver said. "Citadel Special Tactics and Recon."

"A Spectre?" the huge man said, surprised. "Didn't think we rated that kind of backup." He glanced toward Maya, and gave her a look she was familiar with as he inspected her left arm. "And a Siren, too? Man, I feel special!"

"Name's Maya," she said with a nod toward the hulking man.

"Brick," he replied with an ugly bit genuine smile. "I punch things."

Maya nodded and turned her eyes toward the quarian girl. The light on the front of her mask was flickering on and off, indicating she was still breathing hard, no matter how much she'd calmed down.

"You sure you're okay, ma'am?" she asked.

"Yes, I - I'm fine," the quarian said after a moment. "Uh. Tali. Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, Migrant Fleet Manufacturing. How, ah, did you find us?"

"You blew up Chora's Den and were shooting Fist's men," Maya said with a shrug. "We followed the flaming lines to the gun-toting dots."

"I see," Tali said, nodding.

"You're corporate?" Brick asked the quarian with a frown. It was the kind of frown reserved for discovering your honey jar still had live bees inside it.

"Long story," she said, shaking her head. "Not relevant to the current gunfights."

"I'll be the judge of that when we're done debriefing," Nihlus replied. Brick glared at him, and Maya did too. Nihlus' eyes flickered back and forth between them. "Do not take that the wrong way. I intend to bring you in for protective custody, considering that you're now being targeted by a human wanted for a number of serious crimes."

"I see," Tali said, shrinking back in her seat. That just made Maya more annoyed, and for a moment she was reminded of the monks on Athenas, and how they had treated the people under their rule.

"Don't worry," the Siren said, "We'll protect you."

"Damn straight," Brick growled. Nihlus again glanced between them, and his head bobbed quickly in acknowledgement to the unspoken statement. Tali relaxed a little bit more at their words, and sat up straighter, but still looked uncertain. Or that was what Maya guessed by her body language.

"What did those thugs want with you?" the Spectre asked after a few moments.

"I was on my Pilgrimage," she started, then paused and glanced around the car. "My passage into adulthood. I was searching for something useful for the Fleet."

"Something to refit?" Brick asked, and she shook her head.

"That's what the Fleet does, but we don't normally look for things to modify or refit for resale on Pilgrimage," she said. "I was searching for ships or resources, something with long-term value. Tradition is to keep corporate business outside of the Pilgrimage. But, um, well, what I found was something much more interesting than ships or unclaimed mineral or fuel resources. I found evidence of geth movements outside the Perseus Veil."

"When was this?" Nihlus asked, his interest becoming suddenly sharp and focused.

"About two weeks ago," Tali said. "About ten days before the attack on Eden Prime. I tracked down a geth ship to an uncharted world in the Terminus. I was able to disable one of the platforms and remotely access the ship's database through it. I didn't get much data, but what I did find was extraordinary." She took a sharp breath.

"The geth are searching for an Eridian Vault! And the data indicates they may know where it is!"

Maya's eyes widened, and Nihlus went very still. Brick, however . . he simply nodded. Interesting.

But holy crap, an _Eridian Vault_? The Holy Grail of Eridian technology? No wonder everyone was shooting each other over this data. The possibilities of a real Vault were endless. The things she could learn about Sirens and the Eridians . . . .

"What happened then?" Maya asked, shaking herself out of that line of thought. "You didn't take that data back to the Fleet?"

"I attempted to," Tali said. "But the geth detected my intrusion and pursued me out of the system. My ship was damaged and I fled to Citadel space to escape them. I came here on the Citadel to find the Migrant Fleet Manufacturing office on Zakera Ward, I contacted the officers here."

She paused, her fingers tapping together for a moment.

"We arranged a meeting. I reached the site, but when I arrived I was attacked and wounded. I had to summon Chitikka and shoot my way out of there." She paused again, and spoke very quietly. "A quarian betrayed me."

Maya suddenly felt like punching something, and Brick's growl indicated that he agreed.

"Why didn't you go to Citadel Security?" Nihlus asked. his tone a bit more gentle.

"The ones who attacked me were wearing C-Sec uniforms," Tali replied.

Yes. Maya _really _felt like punching something now.

"Awkward," Brick said, his knuckles cracking.

"I fled to the nearest clinic I could find," Tali continued. "Doctor Michel's clinic."

"Yeah, I was there," Brick added. "She put you in touch with Fist, huh? He sent some goons to shut her up."

"A bad idea," Maya said. Tali sighed.

"Fist said he could get me to safety. Maybe take my information to the Shadow Broker." Tali shook her head. "I didn't know who to trust. My own people were compromised. I realized the moment I was in Fist's back rooms that he was going to betray me. He didn't really try to hide it. So I summoned Chitikka and shot my way out of there."

"And that was how I found you," Brick said. Maya and Nihlus nodded.

"I hope I do not need to summon Chitikka and shoot my way out of wherever we're going," Tali added after a moment.

"Rest assured," Nihlus said. "Once we reach C-Sec I will personally protect you while we investigate and bring whoever was behind this to justice."

There was a deadly conviction in his tone. Maya had rarely heard true sincerity in someone's promises, but she recognized it in Nihlus' words. He meant them, and Tali picked up on that as well. She relaxed further at the Spectre's assurances.

Maya understood how the kid had to be feeling. Betrayed, alone, cut off . . . the Siren had felt the same way the day she had learned the truth about the people who had raised her. Unlike Tali, though, Maya had possessed the power and training to smash her way free from the monks who had planned to use her to cement their power.

Then again, maybe she was selling the quarian short. She had, after all, built what reports indicated was a massive walking tank that could fit into her backpack, and had already shot her way out of two ambushes when they'd rescued her.

"No," Maya said, glaring at Nihlus. "Tali doesn't need _protection_. She needs _backup_." The Siren glanced back to the quarian, who regarded her with interest. "Because you're not going to let these jackasses get away with this, are you?"

The quarian shook her head after a moment.

"No," she muttered, sitting up straighter. "We're going to find the _bosh'tet_ who set me up and shove a missile launcher up his waste disposal port."

" . . . Agreed," Nihlus finally said after a moment's contemplation.

"Hell yeah!" Brick said, smacking his knuckles and palm together. "I'll get behind that."

* * *

The aircar descended toward a landing pad close to the central Presidium ring, connected to one of the C-Sec precinct buildings. The wide, open platform was mostly clear, save for a couple of squadcars and a pair of C-Sec officers on duty. A short walkway connected the pad and the building, and the door opened as Nihlus brought the aircar down.

"I hope I don't have to pay for the damages to this thing," Maya muttered as they landed. "I'm not being held responsible for what a Spectre does to my rental."

"We can reimburse the damages with a single call," Nihlus replied as they clambered out of the vehicle. Across the walkway, they could see a pair of C-Sec officers escorting a baseline human male wearing a cream-colored suit toward them. "Miss nar Rayya, we'll need to get you inside swiftly and begin a detailed debriefing. Everything you know about the geth, Fist, and this Vault will be essential, after what happened on Eden Prime."

"I understand," she said with a nod.

Then a heavy-lift aircar slammed with a screech of metal on metal into the pad, smashing one of the policemen standing there and leaving the other staring in shock. The quartet whirled toward the wrecked car, whose doors were hurled open.

Nine-Toes and a dozen bandits piled out, half of them psychos who loosed a torrent on insane gibbering as they charged.

"You pissed off the wrong dog, suit-stain!" Nine-Toes shouted. His skin was covered in livid red and black burns, but if that bothered him, it didn't show. He raised the same Vladof launcher he had been carrying earlier and pointed it at Tali.

She finally admitted that this was not her day.

Missiles erupted, and screams sounded as the quartet scattered. Tali dove for cover behind another aircar, only to feel a sudden, powerful blow of raw force that swatted her in midair. Heat bled through her suit, and noise hammered her helmet's audio filters while her helmet's faceplate turned nearly opaque from a flash of light.

She hit the pad and rolled several times before coming to a halt. She sucked in the air that the blast had knocked out of her lungs, and rolled over onto her back. She triggered her SDU as she rolled, heart pounding in sudden panic, and her shotgun appeared in her hands. The quarian looked up, her body shaking and head pounding.

"-alt the WOUND!" she heard as she was looking up, and caught sight of a lean, tattooed shape hurtling through the air, wielding an improvised axe. She blasted the psycho in mid-air with two hasty shots. His left leg exploded off of his body. He fell in a tumble of screaming pain and spraying blood, and Tali rolled away.

"But I can still hop-hop-hop to the playground!" he cried, thrashing toward her until she put another shell through his masked face.

Tali whirled away from the decapitated human, and saw chaos across the landing pad. C-Sec troops were trading fire with bandits. Brick was beating a psycho to death with another psycho. Nihlus was shooting a bandit held up in another of the Siren Maya's weird burning singularities.

And Nine-Toes was striding toward her, his spike-covered mask locked on Tali as he raised his launcher.

"Die like a good rat!" he shouted, raising the rocket launcher.

Her HUD warned her that his shields were fully intact, and she didn't have enough ammo in the shotgun to drop them. She did the next best thing, and her omnitool flashed as she pointed her free hand at him. A tech mine was digistructed and launched in a heartbeat, impacting Nine-Toes dead center in the forehead and releasing a burning burst of ECM. He growled, shaking his head, and Tali frantically reloaded the shotgun.

"Cute toy," he snarled, and raised the launcher. He pulled the trigger as Tali brought up her shotgun.

A poof of smoke escaped from the back of the launcher, but otherwise nothing happened.

"This one," Tali muttered, and pulled the trigger, "is much less so."

The last part of the sentence was drowned out as she emptied the magazine, putting a dozen shots through Nine-Toes' shield. The first eight blew apart the barriers in a storm of ripping buckshot, and the last four tore into meat and armor. Blood and chunks of flesh erupted out of Nine-Toes' back, and he jerked and fell to his knees.

But he didn't fall, somehow. Despite gaping holes in his flesh and weeping blood running down his stomach and legs, he was still alive, and hurled himself to his feet. A buzz-axe digistructed in his hands as he bolted straight toward a terrified and shocked Tali.

"Scream for me!" he half-shouted, half-gargled, and Tali dropped her shotgun, backing away and drawing a pistol. He leapt through the air, trailing blood, and she twisted and ducked. The spinning buzzsaw blade barely missed her but tore into her shields, triggering a bright flash of blue light as they deflected the blow. She fired as he stumbled past her, bullets blowing out chunks of muscle from his stomach and flank.

He had to be on his last legs, she knew. Mutant or not, no human could survive those injuries. But she also knew that in the time it would take him to bleed out or simply collapse from such massive trauma, she would be dead.

"Cut you open," Nine-Toes gargled. He spun toward her, his movements clumsy and drunken, and surged forward again, raising his axe. She kept firing as she backed away, and he stumbled, slowing with each step.

The pistol clicked empty, and Nine-Toes lurched forward again, axe igh.

A hand, crafted of gleaming black metal, grabbed the raised buzz-axe and twisted it out of Nine-Toes' hand with casual ease, He spun around, howling in fury, and the same metal arm hit him solidly under the chin in a rising uppercut. Nine-Toes was lifted clean off his feet and sent backflipping through the air.

A human with dark skin, iron-gray hair, a fine-tailored cream-colored suit, and a black eyepatch stepped into view, raising a Torgue pistol in his organic right hand. He shot Nine-Toes with a single round in midair as he fell back toward the ground, and the gyrojet missile hit the bandit dead center in the chest as he fell.

Exploded chunks of the bandit hit the pad a moment later.

Silence reigned, and the human turned toward Tali, holstering his pistol.

"Are you injured, miss?" he asked, his voice thickly accented. She was unfamiliar with human accents and couldn't place it.

"No, I am fine, thank you," she offered, exhaling, and turned to look across the pad. The rest of the bandits were thoroughly dead; between the Siren the Spectre, the berserker, and C-Sec, they'd made quick work of them. "Who are you?"

"Ambassador Donnel Udina," the eyepatch-wearing human offered with a short, polite nod. "At your service."

* * *

_**Codex - Technology - Shields**_

_Kinetic barriers, more commonly referred to as "shields" provide effective defense against small arms, melee weaponry, and elemental-based energy ammunition. Whether a starship's massive barriers or a soldier's personal defense system, all shields separate on several basic principles. Kinetic barriers generate repulsive mass effect field from emitters, using built-in sensors to detect incoming objects moving at sufficient velocity. The rising threat of attacks by close assault - in part due to the prevalence of humanity in the galaxy - has led to modified shields with smarter sensor and computational capability to deflect melee attacks while still allowing the shield's user to sit down or be passed objects._

_Shield systems vary depending on type. Many modern suits of armor incorporate full-body shields using a number of small emitters in the armor, allowing for greater overall shield strength. On the other hand, "personal" shields, in the form of self-contained shield devices, are commonly used by plainclothes police, private citizens, and mercenaries. These devices are often worn under clothes or on a belt. An added advantage of these personal shields is that they allow for specialized attachments and subsystems. Most shield subsystems are powered by the same generator mounted in the shield device itself, and provide a variety of benefits._

* * *

_**Codex - Technology - Shield Subsystems**_

_Shield subsystems come in a variety of types, based on the preferences of each shield's manufacturing corporation. For this reason, certain mercenary and military forces prefer the shields of certain corporations due to the unique benefits that they offer. It is rare to find these subsystems used outside of shield devices, due to the "two-for-one" nature of the equipment._

"_Nova" shields, manufactured by both Maliwan and Torgue-Urdnot, generate an expanding burst of energy - powered by an internal capacitor - when the shield's charge is depleted to ward off attackers. While a powerful defensive tool, these shields are frowned upon by many militaries for obvious reasons, and are favored by individuals, particularly assassins or wetworks operatives who are not concerned with collateral damage. A similar but much more common variant is the "Spike" shield, which generates a short, high-powered burst of thermal, electrical, or concussive force in response to close-quarters attacks. Some variants instead launch miniaturized acidic mines to deal with heavily-armored attackers. _

"_Adaptive" shields, manufactured by the Anshin Corporation, include a built-in adaptive technology that subtly adjusts the shield's properties to help repel attacks of a certain type upon detecting that form of attack being used. For example, the shield will intensify to defend against the concussive force of an explosive attack, or adjust the speed of barrier rotation to deflect acidic attacks. Adaptive shields also often contain a built-in medical suite that can assist onboard medical equipment for personal armor when properly interfaced._

_A common, modified variant of the Adaptive shield is the "Roid" shield, which injects the user with a vicious cocktail of various psychoactive drugs and stimulants in response to the shield collapsing, supercharging the shield's wearer and making them tougher and stronger in battle. Users of Roid shields have been reported as being able to match krogan in close quarters and survive otherwise fatal wounds. Roid shields are common among human bandits and other outlaws._

_Hyperion-built "Amp" shields serve the opposite purpose. When properly interfaced with a weapons system, the Amp shield can transfer a small amount of its capacitor's charge to boost the coil in a mass accelerator or digistruct weapon, giving a powerful boost to the weapon's first shot - at the cost of greatly enhanced recoil and a significant drain to the shield's strength._

* * *

**_Author's Notes:_**Chapter's original title was "Paychecks" but then I realized the chapter had very little to do with getting paid, but a great deal to do with terminal applications of knuckles.

One thing I struggled with in this chapter was writing Tali properly. I was having trouble writing her as this in-over-her-head girl who needed to be protected - until I had the same kind of realization that Maya has in this chapter. Tali doesn't need protection because she's some helpless wilting flower. She needs backup, because she's a badass whose only real flaw as a badass is lack of overall experience. This is _No Gods, Only Guns._ When in doubt, err on the side of **_kicking ass_**.

We'll be shifting back to our A plot with Roland and Lilith on Illium next chapter, as well as taking a look at a couple of other characters around the galaxy and seeing what they're up to.

Until next chapter . . . .


End file.
